Learning curves

It was my little brother's birthday yesterday. He was forty years old! I'm not sure why your little brother turning that age should make me feel older than when I turned the same age, but somehow it does.

I went looking for a picture of him as a baby to illustrate this post and can't find one. Dad emailed me one a couple of years back when he was working out how to scan slides but it seems to have been in the inbox of one of our old PC's that totally died recently - I'm much better at backing up now!

I can still remember my Dad telling us that Sean was born - it was a windy wild spring morning in Southland - and we were outside playing when he came out and told us. Dominic was pretty pleased he had a brother. After school we went into Invercargill and stopped at a wholesale flower garden to buy flowers for Mum. I was stereotypical enough to want blue flowers - but ended up with red tulips and gathered some information about plant genetics on the way as I think was the first time some-one tried to explain how plant colours were developed and the search for a black tulip.

I learnt quite a lot from being Sean's big sister - One of my most vivid memories is of when he was about nine months old and Mum was out. I decided (I think with sibling assistance) to give him raspberry ice-block that someone had bought him and Mum had put in the freezer. We sat him in the high-chair seat on the floor (it was one you could lift off the legs) and quickly relised that it was melting faster than he could eat it. With great problem solving skills I went and got a shirt out of the ironing basket and wrapped that around him. One of Dad's white business shirts that is...My memory of Mum's reaction as she walked in the door is that it was fairly constrained in veiw of the mess! And the lesson I have consistently applied since that moment is to avoid raspberry iceblocks at all costs for little people under the age of about eight!

Even now everytime I play peek a boo with a baby I remember playing it endlessly with Sean in his pram with one of Dad's hankerchefs. And that's after five children of my own - that is still the first thing I remember.

So happy birthday little brother - I hope you had more yummy things to eat and drink than raspberry ice blocks or the pureed silverbeet and pumpkin you spat out at me. (Did I mention that I also learnt to delegate to much younger people the task fo feeding solids from having to do it for you :) )