Annie loved her sister. Cora Rose was HER baby and had been since she was born. She loved to give Cora hugs and kisses, to tickle her (Cora accepted her sister’s tickling with a straight face, never so much as cracking a smile), to sing to her, and to talk to her.
However, she liked Cora Rose to do what she was told. In the beginning, this was very easy. Cora Rose just lay there, blinking, and Annie could look at her and kiss her, and then give her back to Mommy and go back to playing. Now Cora Rose was sitting up, though. Sometimes Mommy sat Cora near Annie, which was sometimes kinda fun, and sometimes kinda not fun. Cora could be a good prop for a game – a character in a story, for instance. But she was starting to like her sister’s toys. She grabbed them when she could reach them and shook them around and put them into her mouth. Or sometimes she grabbed her sister’s hair. This was NOT fun.
Annie always grabbed her toys away from Cora when Cora took them. She tried teaching Cora that it was wrong to take toys. “Remember: No!” she said, whenever Cora took a toy or did something else that Annie didn’t like. Cora was not very good at remembering No. And then Mommy started saying “Remember: No!” to Annie and Cora, because Mommy thought it was funny, so Annie had to stop saying it after that.
“No, Cora, that is breakable!” Annie says now.
“That’s not breakable,” Mommy will usually say. “She won’t hurt it if she chews on it a little. She doesn’t even have any teeth.”
But Annie knows the truth. Yesterday, Cora chewed on one of Annie’s beautiful black velvet shoes, her special ones that she wears with her purple sparkly dress. It got all wet. She also got spit all over the soft teddy bear with the beautiful pink dress. Sometimes, Annie gets so mad when Cora plays with her toys and tries to ruin them. Sometimes, she just wants to hurt Cora, to push her over or pinch her, so Cora will learn not to hurt her sister’s toys. Mommy does not seem to care if Cora hurts Annie’s toys. It’s not fair, because when Annie has something of Mommy’s that is breakable, Mommy takes it away from Annie. But when Cora Rose has something of Annie’s, and Annie thinks it’s breakable, Mommy does not take it away. Annie has to take it away herself, and then if Cora gets upset, Mommy gets mad at Annie.
And sometimes Annie plays really fun games, like Baby Sled, where she sits on her sister when Cora Rose is doing her Tummy Time. She really doesn’t understand why her parents get upset when she plays this game. Cora Rose is actually fine when she plays it; she doesn’t mind at all.
In general, Cora Rose is happy to be playing games with her sister, as long as she doesn’t get pushed over or hurt. As long as you don’t expect much of her, she really does well in most games. She makes a good Anna when Annie is Elsa, and a good mean sister when Annie is one of Cinderella’s mean sisters. She stays where you put her, and when you put a blanket or other costume on her, she usually keeps it on if she can’t figure out how to kick it off. She doesn’t argue with Annie. And really, as long as you move a toy a few feet away from her, it’s safe. So overall she’s a pretty good sister.
