Feelin' the Love at Target

With a baby, you often receive a pluthera of attention from strangers. They like to ooh and aah and standing near by is my sweet little Daniel. He'll try to get in on the conversation by announcing "She is my little brother/sister." (Daniel gets a little confused as to who is the brother and who is the sister.) The stranger will then ask some questions about Coral, ask his age and then tell him to take care of his little sister. I think he has been quite well mannered during the one-sided attention conversations. It's not easy for a three year old when he use to be the apple of everyone's eye.

While visiting Target today (a common stomping ground), an elderly couple followed the above dialogue almost to a tee. I can pretty much pick out right from the start which person will present these monologues. Yep, monologues, as they never speak to me; purely directing their attention at Coral, who cannot even return their praise. Which puts me onto another thought- why don't they ever speak to the parent? After all, they are strangers.

But I digress . . . A Targer employee walked up to Coral and said how cute she was and then immediately turned to Daniel and started talking to him about him. She told him she was the "older" sister and understood what it was like for him. Immediately, Daniel's eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "I love you!"

How sweet are those words, even when uttered to a Target employee. This just leads me to believe that he really has felt the neglect these past six months and truly did love this lady for paying attention to him for once.

Let us all try to acknowledge the older siblings of tiny babies, and who knows, maybe we'll be the recipient of an "I love you" statement.