What do you give that takes away? Answer - a sister or, in our case, a brother. If a sibling is the greatest gift you can give your child you at the same time deprive them of your undivided attention. This is, of course, a good thing, although notoriously few first-borns feel that way when their 100% suddenly goes half price.
As an elder sibling it is fair to say I harboured some quiet anxieties as to how Hardy 1 might take to the arrival of Hardy 2 and although I have no conscious memory of the arrival of my sister there will always be an atavistic awareness that while Katherine may have been great for my parents she was a massive gatecrasher at the Max party.
So it was that the elder was kept on a tight leash for the introduction with, (oldest trick in the book), a very large new toy, ('a gift from baby'), on hand to sweeten the bitter pill. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. His ecstatic cries of delight even sounded as though they might be genuine and if there was a modicum of disappointment that we had failed to deliver the clearly requested big sister he did a consummate job of hiding it.
And here we are 7 weeks down the track and he seems just as pleased that he's no longer flying solo. Indeed he is ever solicitous of the baby's well-being and swift to shower him in kisses which never once threaten suddenly a smothering. I suppose touching 3 he is not yet conscious of any diminution of resources although it's only a matter of time before he comes to learn that the Bank of Mum & Dad has a new customer.
If there is one mild criticism to make it is that on the subject of shrieking he has revealed himself to be a rank hypocrite. It turns out that toddlers detest screaming baby blue murder as much as the rest of us. Yet it does not occur to him, strapped in the back of the car, making increasingly hysterical demands of his baby brother that he stop crying that just perhaps the pot is calling the kettle black.
But this is a trifle and at the moment all bodes well for the Hardy Boys.
