"Put Joshua in the crib?"

In a funny turn of events, Joshua has stopped demanding that Sophia be put away in her crib, and has taken to asking instead that he be treated just like his baby sister...

I've been involving Joshua in Sophia's naptime routine, in an effort to make him feel more useful as a big brother.  So we all go upstairs together, and Joshua climbs up onto the daybed in the nursery as I wrap Sophia in her green SwaddleMe blanket.  Joshua's watched the process often enough that he now narrates as I go: "First the bottom, and then the left side, and thennnn the right side!"  Then Joshua starts jumping up and down on the bed and sings "Twinkle Twinkle" with me, at the top of his lungs.  Surprisingly, this very exuberant lullaby actually does put Sophia to sleep... So I put her down in her crib, tell Joshua we have to start whispering now, and we tiptoe out of the nursery to let Sophia rest.

The other evening, I was upstairs with Joshua getting him ready for bed while Sophia was downstairs hanging out with David.  He saw Sophia's SwaddleMe on the daybed and started begging me to wrap him up in it: "Joshua in green blanket?  Put Joshua in blanket?  First the bottom??  Pleeeease??"  Now, Joshua is a giant compared to Sophia, and is manifestly too large to be swaddled in any of the baby blankets we own, let alone in the tiny swaddler.  But because he was asking (relatively) nicely, and because I thought it would be funny, I told him to climb up and we would give it a try.  Once the blanket was kinda sorta wrapped around him, he started directing me through Sophia's bedtime routine: "Mama pick up Joshua?  Sing Twinkle Twinkle?"  And we sang the lullaby together, me slightly out of breath as I cradled my giant toddler in my arms.  Then Joshua grinned and asked to be put in the crib.  Laughing, I said night-night to "baby Joshua" and let him lie down in the crib.  And then I took him out and went through his proper bedtime routine in his big boy room.

The next day, right before Sophia's first early-morning nap, Joshua asked again to be wrapped in the green blanket.  So we did it one last time, and I snapped some cell phone pics!


Silly little bear.  :)  (Though seriously, look how HUGE he is compared to his baby sister!)  He was pretending to be asleep for the picture, but we were both giggling too much to make it look real!  I love that he's coming up with funny little bits like this now.  :)