Baby Love

One of the great benefits of our move (and the main reason why we moved where we did) was that we now live next to our great friends, Brandi, Jesse, and their daughter Adalee, who is one month younger than Ben. Tonight Adalee came over for about an hour and a half while Brandi ran some errands.

Benjamin and Adalee have always gotten along great, which is wonderful. Tonight I got to see them play together for a while, and it was funny.


As much as I try to avoid gender socialization and stereotyping, I've learned with Ben that boys are inherently boys. Adalee is a girl and Ben is a boy. Adalee is dainty and sweet, and Ben is a hurricane of energy. But Ben is a lover; he loves to snuggle and is very affectionate. That plus his boy-ness equals trouble when he tries to cuddle with Adalee.


Ben was more than happy to share his toys (well...kind of), but not so much his mom. Every time Adalee crawled into my lap for a cuddle Ben dropped whatever he was doing, ran to me, climbed on me, and threw his arms around me. I was a human jungle gym. Sometimes he attacked me from behind.



I gave them a bath together and Ben took his showing off to a whole new level. Within one minute of his out of control splashing, half the water was on the floor and Adalee was clinging to the side corner of the tub and looking at him like he'd turned into some kind of animal. (I did not take pictures of this...it's one thing to post pictures of your own child butt naked in the bathtub; it's quite another to post the same of someone else.)