>First contact

>I’m not entirely sure how or when we planned to tell Sebastian that he was going to become a big brother.  I know that a week is an eternity to a toddler, so I didn’t think it would really come up much until we got a lot closer to my due date.

However, other people in our lives started talking about it pretty openly around Sebastian this past month, referring to the fact that there was a baby in my “belly”, and I decided I’d better make sure he understood it from us rather than from everyone else.  Also I noticed a disturbing trend of Sebastian’s to use my belly as a pushing-off point when getting on or off my lap.  So I made sure to give him a few facts and refer to our baby here and there (like showing him our baby’s new crib, which he loves to roll around in.)

These days if you ask the munchkin where our baby is, he will point to my round self and say, “inaire” (which means “in there” in Toddlerese) or “in Mama belly.”  If you ask him what the baby is doing, he will reply, “kicking Mama” or “moving.”  This would always conclude our conversation about the baby, because he rapidly lost interest in something he could neither see nor hear nor play with.

Until yesterday.  Yesterday we had First Contact.

Sebastian was sitting next to me on the couch and put his head and hand down on my belly, which is now large enough and at just the right height to be a natural pillow.  Within a minute or two, the baby gave a little kick.  And you know what the big brother-to-be said?

“Again.”

The baby then kicked again.  I asked Sebastian if he could feel the baby moving and he repeated, “Again.”

Little Rasler obliged with a few more kicks, Sebastian was satisfied, and he slid off the couch and began playing.

I asked him if he had felt our baby moving around and he smiled and said, “Yes.”

It was like they had had their first conversation, and it had gone pretty well.

I’m taking it as a good sign of things to come.