Last night when I got home I asked her what she did during the day, and she very excitedly told me that they had gone to the library and checked out books about elephants. She really wanted to read these books together (even though Stacey had already read them to her a couple of times that afternoon), so after dinner we all sat down to read. Of course, Julia instructed both Stacey and me to “sit down right here” while touching/pointing the carpet in a specific location.
The book I grabbed from the pile was about a family of elephants who had one young elephant (like Julia) and whose mother was pregnant (like Stacey) and due very soon. It’s the typical "another baby is coming into the family" story. The book takes a twist and we find out that the mother elephant has triplets. In typical newborn fashion, the babies cried a lot. When we got to that point in the story I pointed out that “baby elephant” was crying…but unfortunately Jules doesn’t yet realize the reasons why newborn babies cry.
So, Julia thought about it for a second and then got the most pathetic/worried/scared look on her face. When the lower lip came out and started to quiver I knew where we were headed. It probably didn’t help that we chuckled at her. She lost it and started balling. Of course, she wanted a big hug from mommy and could barely get another word out through her tears. She kept saying “baby elephant cry” through her tears until we assured her that the baby elephant was “all better” by flipping forward a couple of pages and showing her a new picture where they were all happy.
It was one of those situations I’ll probably remember for a long time. I took the picture of the page (below) we were reading when it all went down…now that I really look at the picture it is a bit scary… It will be interesting to see what she does when the next one arrives and starts to cry.
