Lately C has been forced to cope with the hard fact that his little brother is an infant, and is therefore the focus of attention among strangers. Where they used to spend all their time interacting with him, now they try to get N to smile or wave at them.

This past weekend he finally figured out how to beat the problem.  We were walking around St. Augustine, and he walked up to a couple of strangers (girls in their mid-20’s) who were sitting on a bench.  When they looked at him, he started looking around shyly and making baby noises.

It was just the two of us at this point because his mom and brother were looking into the possibility of a boat tour. Curious as to what was happening, I stood back and watched while the girls oohed and aahed over him, trying to coaxe him into saying something.  He just smiled and made little humming noiises.  It was a pretty good imitation of N’s little gurgles, if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know what was going on.  I smiled at them and asked him what he was doing. He just “mmm’d” and looked at his feet.

The girls thought this was too cute. They continued to try to get him to speak, making faces, and breaking out the baby talk.  This whole interaction went on for something like 5 minutes.

It stopped when C got distracted: “Ice cream?  Daddy, can I have some ice cream?  Okay, time to go now.  Bye, bye!”  and he headed off towards what he thought was an ice cream store.

The girls were stunned.  They looked at him walking away, and then at me.  I shrugged and smiled, but they were not amused.  I’m not sure why they were glaring at me.  I guess they thought I trained my toddler to pretend to be an infant?  Who knows.

In any case, one thing was for certain: C was not going to be getting any ice cream.