In honor of the arrival of my new niece, I thought I’d go back in time to when N first arrived at the hospital.

Having a baby when there’s another one already at home is a lot more complicated. Instead of just staying in the hospital until discharge time, I shuttled back and forth to make sure that C was doing okay. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was completely necessary – my folks were here staying with him – but at the time it seemed important.

When checkout time came, my folks brought C to the hospital. He came in to see his new brother. There was a brief introduction, we had some more visitors, and then (finally) it was time to get ready to go.

I took C and we started carrying stuff down to the car together. It took us a couple trips, partly because we had brought way too much stuff, and partly because my carrying capacity was diminished by the presence of the 22 month old helper.

Finally, we were finished. We put the last pillow in the car, and I said "All done!"

C ran around and hopped into the passenger side of the car. "Time to go!"

As if he’d ever ridden in the passenger side of any car before.

I smiled and said "No. We have to go get your little brother."

He shook his head. "No. Let’s go."

In the meantime, he was trying to figure out how to pull the seat belt down so he could buckle up. This gave me an excuse to pause while I tried to decide on an approach. I helped him buckle up – and decided on manipulation.

"What about momma? Should we wait for momma?"

He looked at me. "Just momma?"

"No, momma and – "

"No. Let’s go."

Needless to say, we weren’t going to leave momma, nana, grampa, and baby N at the hospital. However, since words had clearly failed me, I reached over and tickled him.

Honestly, I really wish that strategy would work as well with the rest of my life.