fiske dot com: sibling love

every day when tennyson gets home from school, maggie is patiently waiting inside the door and the first thing they do is scream and give each other a big hug.

it's been a sweet ritual that i love watching.

today, it went beyond sweet and melted my heart.

maggie sat at the door waiting.

the two screamed, and hugged.

and then they both ran over to the swing to see their baby bridget,

and they both stood there asking her all sorts of questions (i'm pretty sure they think she'll start talking any day now).
just like that, she's one of the gang.

truth is, i've been a little shocked at how quickly tennyson and maggie fell in love with bridget.
they call her "baby bridget" and they just can't get enough of her.

the day that they came to the hospital to find that bridget wasn't there with mommy, they were crushed.

they spent the long week looking at pictures and videos on our phone,
and they each had a picture of them holding bridget that they slept with at night and carried around all day.
you can imagine how thrilled they were when one day mom walked through the door with bridget,
and she got to come home to stay.

a few days later, when i had to take bridget back to the doctor for a follow-up, maggie sobbed and sobbed.

i'm pretty sure she thought that when i said bridget needed to go to the doctor that she imagined another drawn out hospital stay.

she shrieked with joy when bridget and i walked through the door just a short hour later,

and she quickly asked me to "show maggie!" (which is her way of saying she wants to hold bridget).

the little grin she had on her face as she sat there and cradled her sister was one of the sweetest things i've ever seen.

maggie has this little fonzie impression that she does only for bridget.

she walks up, gets right in bridget's face, and goes "heyyyy!"

then she proceeds to poke her little sister in the eyes and nose and mouth, and generally be a bother.

but she does it out of love, and when we remind her to be soft, she gently strokes bridget's hair and tells her she is "so pretty."

tennyson has really taken to his big brother role.
he absolutely loves holding her and will ask a few times a day to "hold bridget!"
and he always demands we take a picture of him holding her.

he is genuinely distressed when she is upset, and when she cries, he runs into the other room to tell me that bridget is sad.

then he tells me that i should hold her, or feed her, or whatever he thinks she wants at the time.

the other day, mike and i were sitting in the living room and i was holding bridget.

she started to fuss and tennyson looks at me and says "mama, open your tummy!"

i wasn't quite sure what he was getting at, and i was thinking maybe he wanted me to put her back where she came from. maybe he'd had enough of all this fussing.

so i asked him for clarification.

"open my tummy?"

"yeah! open your tummy! drink the milk!"

and then he lifted up his shirt and made pretend gulping noises to show me that he meant bridget was hungry.

mike and i couldn't hold back the giggles.