Monday, December 14, 2009

Sibling Play

I have been looking forward to the time when Shelby and Harding would really start interacting with each other. Lately, I am seeing glimpses of this interaction and it is exciting! Yesterday, Shelby was having some tummy time with one of her favorite toys. This is one of the only positions we can put her in with the dreaded hip brace and luckily she will tolerate it for small periods of time if she has an interesting toy in front of her.



Harding was running around playing with his trains and noticed that I was taking pictures of Shelby. I think he wanted some attention, so he got down on his belly too and started pushing buttons on the toy with his sister. She loved it.



And here is the really neat thing. Shelby has trouble doing things with her left hand. She struggles with grasping objects and supporting herself using the left side. Shelby realizes this and just prefers to use the more efficient right hand. We are constantly trying to find creative ways to isolate Shelby's right hand and force her to use the left so that she'll get better at it. Either Harding has observed this, or just happened to be lying on her left side, but look what he did:




They played like this for several minutes. Shelby seemed to be soaking up the attention from Harding. I think she is lucky to have such a great big brother!

Then after a good 7 minutes, Harding got up and went back to his truck....and took the toy with him. I had to laugh, because it was such typical sibling behavior. At some point, I know she'll be able to return the favor and take away his stuff. In the meantime, Shelby has plenty  of other toys.

1 comment:

  1. Elisabeth has those same jammies! They are adorable.

    What fun it is as a parent to see your children start to interact. I'm am sure this is only the beginning of many fun times to come for Shelby and Harding!

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