Jessica's reaction to the arrival of her baby brother has been interesting. She asks lots of questions about him and about what we're doing with him, though of course these days she asks lots of questions about everything. (She's in a "why?" phase.)
She hasn't shown any interest in holding Ben, or touching him or helping us change his diaper or interacting with him much at all. She has, on a few occasions, imagined that she can guess what he would be saying if he could talk; she then acts a bit like an interpreter, explaining to us what it is he means by his cries, sighs, and murmurs.
What she has done is taken a brand new interest in her baby doll. She's loved to play with her menagerie of stuffed animal friends for quite some time. We've had this particular baby doll since before she was born (it was actually something we got so we could acclimate the dogs before we brought a baby home). Until recently, she'd shown very little real interest in it.
Over the past week, though, she has begun to carry it with her all around the house. She acts out things she needs to do to take care of it, some of them reasonable and nearly accurate, others far fetched. It seems that one way she is dealing with the changes in her life is to simply be like her mommy. (Or, in the picture below, like her aunt.)
