Ok, so we had guessed Mopsy’s pinching was in some way an attention thing.  Then the incidents on Tuesday happened - what could be more obvious:  “Daddy’s playing with Flopsy too much, how can I remind everyone I’m there and would like to be played with too?  I know what gets people’s attention - I’ll go and pinch a baby!”.  Ok, it sounds horrific, but when we remind ourselves that, if I’m right, this is the thought process of a very intelligent, very frustrated 18m old.  Mopsy is very bright and understands nearly everything we say to her.  She has a lot of words, but of course no where near enough to make herself understood when it comes to feelings.  She is constantly reminded that her big sister, Flopsy, is far more articulate than her, and therefore much less frustrated, which leads to her being much more pleasant to play with and which means, very unfortunately, that she tends to get played with a little bit more .  We’re less likely to be pinched or yelled at by Flopsy simply because she can tell us exactly what she wants us to do - poor old Mopsy just can’t do that.  If she wants us to do something, and we don’t understand her, her immediate, and very understandable, response is to lose her temper and pinch or scream at us.  Flopsy used to do exactly the same thing, but it wasn’t so frequent or so pronounced, probably because we had the time to pay clear attention to her.  Gah!  Remind me why we’re having a third baby?  Is it fair?  Ho hum…bit too late for worrying about that now!  Anyway, back to the matter in hand:  My very good friend persuaded me I should go to the BF Support Group (a different one) yesterday, that I had intended to miss for fear of more baby pinching.  She very sensibly said that I could go and spend the whole time playing with Mopsy if that was what was necessary, and leave if it got too much.  I didn’t have to leave - Mopsy was a dream.  I was careful to play with Mopsy a lot at the beginning, until she’d had enough of me and wanted to go off and run around on her own for a bit.  When she came back to me, I showered her with attention, until she was ready to go off on her own again.  She played beautifully with the other toddler there (a boy of about Flopsy’s age) and with Flopsy and we didn’t have one pinching incident all day long - not even Flopsy when we were at home.  What a huge change from the last few weeks!  And how stupid of me not to catch on sooner to what she was trying to tell us!  So I’m now hoping that by playing with her lots and lots, and paying her attention before she wants it, she might ‘forget’ about her unpleasant little method of trying to get attention from us.  The more I can prevent her getting to the stage where she’s thinking of pinching, the less she’ll do it, I’m hoping, and the more she’ll forget about it.  And hopefully she’ll soon learn some better ways of expressing herself!  Of course, I’m not expecting her to stop pinching out of frustration when she wants something she can’t have (e.g a toy of Flopsy’s etc.), but that’s just normal sibling bickering, isn’t it?

So, onto Flopsy:Dh has a colleague at work called Paulo, who once came over to our house for a meal and played with Flopsy a lot.  She sees him everytime we go into Dh’s work and he’s always lovely to her.  She’s got a real crush on him and it’s very sweet to see her go all coquettish when she sees him.  At the time she really got keen on him, her way of expressing that she really, really liked someone was to say that they were a family member because of how people who constantly told her they loved her would also explain their relationship to her e.g. I’d tell her she was my daughter, or that she was Mopsy’s sister.  She’d say things like “I love you, Grandma, you are my Granddaughter”.  So when she got very keen on Paulo, she told us she wanted him to be her sister - we explained that boy-sisters were called brothers (obviously something she has no experience of yet!), so she started saying “I love Paulo, he’s my brother” an awful lot.  Of course, we didn’t contradict her and just said things like “He is good fun to play with, isn’t he?  Maybe he’ll come round again sometime to play with you”.  When I got pregnant and we started talking about the baby a lot, we mentioned that it might be a boy or a girl - a new brother or sister.  She told us very often she wanted it to be a boy - a brother for her - and she wanted it to be called Paulo.  I soon noticed that she constantly referred to it as ‘he’ and told anyone who asked her that it was a brother called Paulo.  I thought nothing of it except that that was her current favourite boys’ name and we agreed we wouldn’t disappoint her just yet by telling her that if it was a boy it probably wouldn’t be called Paulo!  Dh, meanwhile, told Paulo what Flopsy was saying.  Then yesterday we went into Dh’s work - we hadn’t been there for a while - and Paulo came up to us to say ‘hello’.  Flopsy looked at him with a sort of amused, surprised look and said “You’re in Mummy’s tummy!”.  Dh and I looked a bit confused and then it dawned on us - Flopsy had been under the impression that it actually was real-life, grown-up Paulo in my tummy and that when he ‘popped out’ (as she calls it!), he’d be her brother and be able to play with her forever!  No wonder she was so keen for the baby to come!  She very quickly realised her mistake and the poor little girl was really embarrassed!  She made me pick her up and she buried her head in my shoulder - she wasn’t upset that Paulo wasn’t actually the baby, but that she’d made a mistake like that in front of everyone.  I was so sorry for her, really felt for her, but tried to remind myself that everyone will experience moments of acute embarrassment in life, and that she’d get over it.  She soon did, and was happily running round the store again, hiding from Paulo.  I’ve yet to broach the subject of the baby again with her - thought I’d leave it a bit for her to get her head round the fact that it isn’t Paulo coming at Christmas!