Pre-schoolers know what they want. Our three-year-old granddaughter Katie does. She recently implored her father, “Dad, I want a baby sister. Everyone has one. And I never got to have one.”
“Who else has a baby sister?”
Katie listed several friends.
Dad agreed, a lot of her friends did have baby sisters and added, “Katie, babies are a lot of work. It’s not that simple.”
“I know! I’ll take care of her! You won’t have to do anything. I’ll do everything. Please! I just want a baby sister! Please!!!” she insisted.
Daddy tried logic, “Do you know where babies come from?”
“Yeah, Dad. God makes them. Just like He made me.”
Her mother posted the conversation on Facebook and concluded, “Nice try, Katie. You have Daddy wrapped around your little finger, but I don’t think he will budge on this one.
One friend commented, “She needs to be talking to God then.”
“It would take an act of God for us to have another baby!” her mother agreed.
Be careful what your children pray for. An older Katie, one nearer my daughter’s age, commented, “This Katie spent 11 years praying for a baby sister, not realizing her mommy had a fertility problem that required surgery to have babies. Here I am with my miracle baby sister. (She posted a picture of both of them). Just saying…. Lol, my parents told me to STOP praying when they found out they were expecting in their 40’s,” she wrote.
Big Katie added that she actually had to keep little Katie’s promise to do everything. “I practically raised my sister,” she said.
Katie’s cousin, Henry “still begs for a little sibling. It’s hard being the youngest,” his mom (also a youngest child) wrote.
Another friend commented, “I begged my parents for a baby sister and may still have some bitterness about not getting one.”
Not every child wants a younger sibling. When my friend’s son told his three year-old about a soon to arrive baby sister, the darling child looked at her parents in disbelief, She screamed, “No! Take her back!” and cried miserably. Perhaps at three she feared something she couldn’t quite put into words.
It reminds me of the recent edition of the comic strip “For Better or For Worse.” Elizabeth had just learned she would have a baby sister. Elizabeth asks, “Daddy, when the new baby comes will you still love me?”
I visited a dethroned youngest shortly after the baby and momma came home from the hospital. The new big brother watched his mother pick up the baby instead of him, carry the baby around everywhere and feed the baby. Suddenly reality hit, the little feller burst out, “New baby, take back.”
Fortunately, most siblings welcome the new arrival. Daisy, Katie’s big sister, loved talking to her mom’s ‘big, fat baby belly.’ She called her mom’s belly button, the mic-re-phone to the baby. Didn’t matter where she was, pre-schooler Daisy talked to her baby sister in that belly whenever the mood hit her.
Her mom wrote, “she cracks me up….especially because she insists on doing this in public as frequently as she does at home saying, “Stop, stop, momma. ….hey, baby. You in momma’s big fat belly? Goo goo, ga ga, baby!”
At the store, a half dozen women saw her talking to the “momma belly” and laughed hilariously. It was funny and refreshing to see Daisy eagerly talk with her unborn baby sister. Daisy wanted Katie to usurp her position as the youngest. And, unlike child number four, child number three, didn’t even have to beg Daddy to let her have a baby sister.