Kuwa-Ba

Baz is such a perfect "kuya" (Filipino for "older brother"). He loves and adores Hadrien, more than you'd imagine a 4-year old is capable of.

As soon as we found out that we were expecting, Raffy and I told Baz that "mommy has a baby in her tummy". Adopting a ridiculously contrived baby voice, we pretended that the baby in the tummy was talking to him. Soon enough, he eagerly awaited the arrival of "baby" (we chose to wait until the birth to find out what the gender was). Finally, he met Hadrien for the first time.


Anticipating that Baz would feel jealous or displaced, we made sure that Hadrien had a gift for Baz when we came home from the hospital. It was not enough however to spare Hadrien from what was to come. We didn't help matters by being overly protective of the new baby - telling Baz not to touch the baby's face or to come too close for fear that Baz would accidentally hurt him. Thus, when we were not looking, Baz would smack Hadrien on his face and you-know-what, and he had only been circumcised! Then, a few weeks later, Baz bit hard on Hadrien's big toe, leaving a bluish depression that went away only after a couple of days. Baz's ambivalence didn't last long though....
















Every now and then, they'd argue over toys. At first, Baz had trouble learning to share his toys. Eventually however, Hadrien started grabbing toys from Baz, who felt helpless since he didn't want to fight back. I realized the extent of Baz's protectiveness over his brother when Raffy was starting to scold Hadrien in a loud voice. Baz rushed to Hadrien and, for no apparent reason, spanked his hand. I was surprised and started to say something - but he said, "Daddy, don't scold him, I scolded him already" - he was only 3 then - so imagine my amazement!

This is not to say that his affection is not reciprocated. Just recently, when Baz was on "time-out", Hadrien got up from playing and stood next to Baz in the "time-out" place. An act of solidarity from a 2-year old. Heartwarming, isn't it?