Brother Love

This blurry picture was taken when Hannah was less than 24 hours old... that's her big brother Mikey there, giving her a big smooch. Sometimes pictures are so terrible they're almost unpresentable, but so wonderful that you can't hit the "delete" button. :)

When we found out we were going to have a baby, Mikey was very excited. Heck, after several miscarriages (we had maybe three or four extremely early-term miscarriages between Mikey and Hannah) we were all pretty charged up when it became clear that this one was going to make it all the way to delivery! Many months ago we asked Mikey whether he wanted a sister or brother, and in typical Mikey fashion, at first without really thinking about it, he gave the "perfect" answer: "It doesn't matter to me, as long as the baby is healthy." Weeks later, that had mysteriously changed to "a brother!" which was not a problem until we found out through ultrasound that we were indeed going to have a sister. Ultrasound pictures are never 100% conclusive, but Hannah was nice enough to give us a viewpoint that made us probably 97-98% positive that it was a girl. Mikey refused to be convinced, and I'm pretty sure he started praying that the baby was a boy. We did explain to him that the baby was already what it was going to be and we can't change that by praying any more than we could pray a baby girl that has already been born into being a boy, but that didn't seem to have any effect at first.

Eventually, though, Mikey came around, and he became very excited about having a baby sister. Now that Hannah is finally here, our biggest problem is getting Mikey to give her room to breathe! He's always giving her a smooch, or holding her hand, or touching her little tootsies. I've had to resort to saying "Mikey, are you touching the grownup who is holding Hannah? Then you are TOO CLOSE!" and he backs off a little.

But I think we prefer the little inconvenience of Mikey being underfoot because he wants to be around Hannah, to the big inconvenience if he hated and resented her. I think the two of them are likely to be very close throughout their lives, which is awesome. :)