Idol worship

What makes one person worship another?  I guess the answer to that usually lies within the inner being of the worshipper; we worship people who epitomize whom it is that we want to become (or in some misguided cases, what they have).  In our family I have begun to notice a pattern of favoritism and worship amongst the children.  Each child seems to be most taken by the sibling who is directly above them.  Bracken is of course exempt from this because he has made it very clear that he considers himself to be the third partner in our marriage, and really more parent than child.

This entry is necessary because I need to remember this phase of Tate's life.  Tate LOVES Abbie.  I don't mean that Tate just thinks Abbie is fun to play with, he thinks that Bracken is fun to play with too (Ruby he merely tolerates but at least he has stopped attacking her).  He is obsessed with all that is Abigail Marilyn Allen.  Tate refers to all children as "Abbie".  He need not be bothered to learn any real names, Abbie will suffice.  A few months ago Tate would call Ruby by her own name, in fact his first words were "baby Ruby", but now even she is just another Abbie.  

From the minute Tate wakes up in the morning he wants to know where his big sister is.  He has begun to address me now when I go and get him from his crib with a cheerful wave and a "hi mom!" but then he just points and says "Abbie?" (pronounced AH •bee), that is my signal to fetch him and help him find his #1.  I don't have any idea when this true love began but I do know that Tate gets very jealous of Bracken because, after all, Abbie has her own number one...Bracken.

When we were at Target today Tate, as Justin put it, "teenage girl screamed" when he saw anything with princesses or Hannah Montana on it because he knew Abbie loves those things.  Bracken and Abbie were at school so Justin and I decided to take advantage of our time with only half of the kids and run some errands.  We went to Target to try and track down a Tinkerbell costume for Ruby (they were all awful and horribly tacky) but ended up birthday shopping for Bracken instead.  As we walked through the aisles with boy things in it Tate was interested, he did acknowledge a train (choo choo) and a remote controlled stuffed dog but he was far from enthusiastic about anything.  However, when we turned the corner to the little girl dress up aisle I thought his little fingers were going to break off with how feverishly he was trying to undo the safety belt that harnessed him to the little red plastic seat of the shopping cart.  It was like that scene from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls when Jim Carrey finds himself in the room with all of those animal heads and he is so overwhelmed that his head begins to spin and the picture blurs.  Tate was overcome, knowing that Abbie would love all of these beautiful, sparkly, shiny things----purses, dresses, boas!!!!---but Abbie was nowhere to be found and his limited vocabulary would prevent him for regaling her with the details of what he had discovered.  He was distraught.  Luckily Justin was able to appease him with what I can only imagine was the UT mascot, a very ugly stuffed burnt orange longhorn in a hat.

[I wish that I had gotten some pictures of him in the girl aisle at Target but I didn't think about writing this blog until hours later, so I had to settle for the pictures I took of him coveting the zillions of Trick-or-Treat Jack O' Lanterns.]

Let me make one point very clear, Tate does not want to be Abbie.  Tate is not interested in girly things for himself he just knows how happy they make Abbie.  I tried recently putting one of Abbie's Disney Princess dresses on him just to see what he would do and he freaked out, he did NOT want to wear it.  He's not interested in her toys, just her.  He does like her Cinderella slippers but that has more to do with the blue flashing heels that light up each time you take a step than the fact that they are Abbie's or like princesses.

Whatever the reason, I could not have chosen better idols for my children than each other and I hope that they will continue to love and idolize each other for the rest of their lives!!

****Also, we found out yesterday (after 6 weeks of sun) that it does indeed rain in Texas!