Getting Ready for Little Sister

We have couple of friends who happen to have newborns. When we've spent time with them Arseny has been both curious and not exactly gentle (which is totally normal for his age). However, this got us thinking...we need to see if we can't better prepare Arseny for little sister to enter Malenky's world. Matt thought it would be a good idea if we let Arseny have his "own" baby. Luckily we had a "baby" that Arseny had inherited from the Chantel girls. So we brought out baby complete with a tiny outfit I had dug out from his newborn days and started to explain how we hold and love the baby. He is absolutely thrilled with his new baby and packs "her" around carefully hugs her and lets Matt and I hold the baby and him at the same time. He loves that we give so much attention to the baby and reinforce how careful we are when holding her. So baby has been going everywhere with us and Arseny has been learning words like "gentle" and "careful" and how to love the baby as opposed to poking it's eyes out which he seems to have down to a perfection. Unfortunately it's one of his greatest skills...

For a while there we were having a problem. Arseny plays with a few boys who have 2 or 3 years on him who started to be really careful around him and say "I don't like that baby" or "that baby hurt me" for a while they would make a wide swath around him when veering into his path. Like I said...we're working on poking eyes. Some kids go through a biting phase...well mine's a eye poker... discipline and working on behavioral skills has literally snuck up on us and bit us the rear. I don't know where I've been (La La Land) ? but apparently I didn't realize that my 16 month old went from baby to little boy. He understands WAY more than I had previously given him credit for. It's such hard work and a never ending task in order to help them learn appropriate behaviors. Ok, I know he's is only 16 months old, however he's fully aware of when he throws things in a tantrum and doing things he knows he's not supposed to like sprinting to the open bathroom shoving his arm into the toilet as fast as he can all while he's looking right at you...oh it's so much fun to see what will make those parents react. Needless to say we've got our work cut out for us and we are constantly asking other parents that we trust and reading parenting material to get new ideas and and to help us learn what we can do. I'm trying not to let my head spin at the thought of having two. It will be an adventure!!!