The Contested Limelight

"GENTLE, Edith!" and "Stop touching the baby so hard!" seem to be coming out of our mouths all too frequently these days. For the most part, Edith loves her little sis. She is constantly kissing and cooing at Alice and asking to hold her. She takes her duty as backseat baby monitor very seriously. (Heard recently from the second row of our new Mazda: "Sorry mom, I got distracted listening to the story and I forgot to watch Alice.")

Figuring out how to contain and appropriately channel all that love is another thing entirely, though. I sometimes feel like George dealing with Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Unlike Lennie, I think there may be some jealousy mixed in with Edith's overweening big sister love. Edith's emotions are right at the surface these days and the smallest setback brings on tears. She's also acting out for attention much more than usual, and this has been attested by her daycare teachers, too.

I feel for her. It's got to be tough to be upstaged by the new kid on the block who gets oohs and ahhs just by burping or yawning. I know it's supposed to be a phase and that stasis is eventually reached. But the road is tougher than I imagined. Hopefully the daddy-daughter swim lessons we're starting next week will ease the transition a bit.

Alice continues to play the calm, cool, collected counterpart to her sister's histrionics. She is a wonderful passenger in the car, is already starting to sleep for long stretches at night, and occasionally falls asleep mid-cry. Alice has a penetrating gaze. I haven't won a staring contest yet. She did give us a bit of a scare last night by coughing up a trace of bright red blood with her spit-up, but after a quick call to the pediatrician (diagnosis: dried out sinuses) and a frantic trip to the drug store to buy a humidifier she seems to be in the clear.

Christmas was a change of pace for us this year. We have become accustomed to traveling to North Carolina for some greater or lesser portion of the holiday, and we have assumed all of the Boger Christmas customs. This year, with my duties at church on Christmas Eve and with Alice being so small, we decided to try having Christmas in Princeton instead. We did fairly well, I think, adopting some customs from each family and making some new ones of our own. Edith did the requisite reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" with Mor-Mor, Grandpa, and Uncle Peter via Skype. Gretchen played the role of her dad on Christmas morning -- going into the family room before anyone else to make sure that Santa had really come. In contrast to Boger Christmas tradition where all gifts came from Santa, there were gifts from both Santa and Mom and Dad under the tree. We did not rouse ourselves to make the cracked wheat breakfast that Mor-Mor serves. Instead we saved our appetites in order to join my sister and her family for Christmas dinner at their house in the early afternoon. Having grown up with my cousins nearby, we used to go around to each others' houses on Christmas day to play with each others' toys. So in accordance with that tradition, my sister's family came over to our house after dinner.

I had just been congratulating Gretchen on our "No Assembly Required" Christmas - surely one of the last for awhile - when two 3 year olds put my patience to the test disassembling a toy that had come in one piece, then proceeding to climb all over me and ask me to do five other things as I was fixing it.

On Saturday we headed down to my parents' house for the annual enormous family gathering. I think the head count for dinner on Sunday night was 60. Aside from some sad family news about pending divorces and the death of an in-law, the gathering was merry. Alice was passed around and held by several aunts, uncles, and cousins, and so was 3-month old Daniel. It was somewhat gratifying to see that Daniel's big sister was going through some of the same trials as Edith. It's not just us!


Much of the day Monday was spent in another Lank tradition: playing with the new video games and trying to beat my dad's high scores. All the Nintendo games I got as a kid had already been opened and the high scores all said "Chris". Mom treated Dad to a new Wii this Christmas, hoping it would make his time in front of the TV more exercise-like. Edie particularly enjoyed the bowling (or as she called it "balling") game. The other highlight of the day was Alice's first trip to the beach, accompanied by a visit to Boardwalk Fries and the chocolate shop where I used to work as a teenager.

All in all, a great Christmas. Now back to work (Tom) and on to job interviews (Gretchen). Updates on the latter front anon, we hope.