Green eyed monster

On saturday the girl met her first first cousin. He's my brother's tiny little 10-week-old son. She rarely sees children younger than herself and I don't think she's been around infants since she was one. So she didn't really know what to make of him.

We're currently visiting my parents, and my brother and family were also up for a couple of days. When we showed up we got to meet my nephew for the first time. The girl didn't quite know what to make of him. There was clearly a bit of jealousy when the wife or I held him. She did a bit of acting up and making disappointed ooooo noises with a scrunched up face. She's normally got a good disposition and has never been bothered by us holding other children before. So this was a bit unusual.

The girl tried being gentle to her cousin, but didn't seem to be entirely sure how. The poking in the eye and squeezing the head was not meant maliciously – as far as we could tell. I mean, she was about as gentle with him as she is with me when she tries to stroke the side of my face – i.e. not very. It usually ends up as slapping or scratching. Fortunately with a bit of supervision, she wasn't able to do any damage to her cousin.

She did kind of get used to him after a while. But she kept acting a bit strange the entire time – something that mostly stopped after they left.

Of course some of this could be attributed to being the 4^th time she had to change house during the trip, and the chaos was starting to get to her. I can imagine her thinking Wait… do we live here now? Do I have to live with him? Is this my brother? Is that how it happens? Can I still drink milk? What's going on?

We did try to explain everything to her, and we know she can understand much of what we tell her, but there's no way to know how much of the abstract We're going to visit my parents and your cousin will be there she can possibly understand. At least she's not freaking out when we leave her alone with people for a few hours. I suppose we've done this travel thing enough that she gets that we're not sizing her up for adoption, but just showing her off to new people.