Adjusting to Life with a Sister

Hope is learning to be a big sister.  It's not easy for her, but she's trying very hard.  My husband and I, we don't think she needs to change anything, but she seems to think differently.  There are some areas where we see her acting older, and a few where she seems to be regressing...  I always wondered how she'd react to not being the only child and now I know!  Here are a few of her 'new' behaviours...

- Giving up her nap.  I'm not sure what makes Hope think that now that she's the older sister she shouldn't nap.  I've tried crying screaming gently explaining to her that mommy needs her to nap, but she doesn't seem that convinced.  It's concerning.

- Obsession with baby diapers and changing bums.  Hope seems to think that her sister is always in need of a bum change.  Quite frequently though the day she will bring me a diaper and say 'babies? bum?"  I try to explain to her that Grace does not need a diaper change every 5 minutes.  She always looks skeptical.  Hope also is obsessed with changing her babies' bums.  They are always poopy ("Ucky! Poop!")  We are going through many more wipes than we used to.  The "babies" require quite a few to get the poop off.  Every 5 minutes.

- Obsession with her own diapers.  We have been in the gentle process of potty training Hope for the last few months.  We are allowing her to go at her own pace, which has basically meant her sitting on her potty a few times a day for a few minutes without any success.  Recently, however, she has taken to taking her diaper off and telling me 'all done'.  She will then wander around the house naked, sit on the potty for a few minutes and then bring me a new diaper and say 'Bum'.  (She hasn't had another poop accident since my last post.)  The only problem with this is that she wants to throw out her diaper every time she takes it off - sometimes completely dry.  I cannot, for the life of me, convince her that her diaper isn't "ucky" if it's dry.  She just shouts "UCKY" and runs to throw it in the garbage.  Between her diapers and the baby wipes we are going to go broke!  (Not to mention fill up the landfill...)

- Bottles.  Hope has a vice.  It's a bottle of milk to help her go to sleep at night and for nap.  In the weeks before bringing Grace home we had convinced her to go down for her nap with a sippy cup instead of a bottle... that quickly ended when Grace came home.  Now she wants bottles all the time, and isn't above stealing her little sister's if we're not looking.  (For medical reasons I am unable to breastfeed).  I struggle with being flexible to help her transition and with not giving up what progress we've made!  It's hard to reason with a not-yet-two year old about why the baby gets bottles and she doesn't!  I'm trying to give her 'big girl cups' (real cups, not sippies) hoping to make her feel special in a more advanced way.  I hope it works!

I'm so lucky to have such a fun, helpful, loving, silly child.  I hope that she doesn't feel the need to grow up too fast; she's still my baby!