Brother, What Brother?

Despite my earlier post, A and C do love each other, in their own way. C is one of the few children A gives the time of day to, in general she looks other kids up and down, and then walks away to do her own thing. But she will pester and pester and pester C until he finally plays with her (and then screams bloody murder when he doesn't do it her way). If you ask her who he is in a picture or ask her what his name is, however, she gives a sly smile, giggles and does the baby version of a shrug.

Her vocabulary is now past the point that I can count the number of words and we have moved into two and three word sentences (I sitting! One more minute!). There is no reason besides KNOWING it drives him crazy that she cannot come up with even a rough approximation of his name. She has had names for many members of our playgroup and her stuffed animals for weeks, so she obviously gets the concept. She's doing it deliberately to get his goat.

Yesterday was the ultimate in sibling torture. We were inspecting the pictures on the fridge and as she pointed to the love of C's life, she broke out in a grin and said "Juya." This sent C into the far, deep realms of hysterics. "SHE CAN SAY JULIA. SAY C. SAY C. What about ME?" For the next 45 minutes, he followed her around screaming "Say C!" and she kept responding with the sly smile and a shrug.

While I fear the day she turns the metal games my direction, I have to applaud her success at getting her brother where it hurts. He may be able to overpower her physically, steal her toys, and best her at any game of tag or hide and go seek, but she is wining the mental game right now and she knows it.