Uncle Jeff

My brother came to visit today. "Uncle" lives in London, England - so he and Owen don't see each other that regularly. The first time Jeff (the Uncle) met Owen was before he had moved overseas, and around the time Owen was a couple weeks old. Jeff wasn't keen on holding Owen. You can see in the picture to the left, he is looking over Kim's shoulder (Aunt). I believe that day we managed to get Jeff to hold Owen for less than a minute while he was sitting on the floor. As I recall it took quite some time before Jeff became comfortable to hold Owen. Owen must have seemed breakable.

We had to work Jeff in slowly into the role of "Uncle". Say to Jeff, "here you hold him". Or, sit Owen down beside him on the sofa. Later on of course Owen would do it himself. Sit himself down beside Jeff and hand him a book. Somewhere there is a picture of that. Jeff still stares at Owen - with this look of "Holy crap, what is that?" or "Why is that kid jumping up and down like that?" - but he is much more comfortable with him around. This picture taken in June, shows Jeff throwing Owen around in the back yard.

Today, Owen insisted on going with me to pick up Uncle at the Go Station. At the house Owen ran around like a mad man from one side of the house to the other, running to jump on Jeff - taking Uncle Jeff by the hand to the window to see a rainbow. "Come Uncle, rainbow". All in all Owen was being a bit of a show-off. "play with me, play with me!" A kid throwing himself at you is a bit harder to fend off than a possibly breakable 2 week old. But I think Uncle Jeff is enjoying the role. It is too bad that England is so far away.