Davey Bear Turns 1

This is going to be a quick post with more supplemented later. Davey Bear turned 1 this week, which in addition to the start of the new decade was the big event at our house. He thoroughly enjoyed himself with his pizza and cupcake night at home and then an outing to the Choo-Choo cafe on Saturday. (More pictures to come later.) As a quick little tidbit, one of my colleagues at my office who has kids about the same age apart as mine mentioned that she has started to give the younger one things as gifts that she knows the older one will want to play with in an effort to encourage sharing. The idea is that the older kid will want so badly to play with the toy that the younger kid gets that the older kid will be willing to share other toys to get a turn with it.

I tried this out by "giving" David one of the Thomas the Train toy engines that AJ did not yet have--the only red engine, no less--and so far, the idea seems to be working. I wrapped the package with a bit of the back peeking out so that AJ could see it was a Thomas the Train toy. As soon as he figured this out, he insisted on taking the package all the way upstairs to where David was getting ready for bed so that David could open it *immediately*. As soon as the paper was off, AJ said quietly, "AJ play with James??" I told him he would have to ask David very nicely if he could borrow the engine for a few minutes. David, of course, was interpreted to have agreed and AJ was off. Since then, there have been three or four times when David bravely scooted over to the train table, which was previously forbidden AJ-only territory. AJ started out by saying "no, no, Davey, these are AJ's trains." I reminded him that the red one was David's and that he could play with it. AJ immediately offered David one of his older engines, which David happily accepted, and AJ was able to continue with James. So far, so good on this strategy. Once David figures out that James is the more desirable engine-of-the-moment, though, I am going to need a Plan B.