Uncle Buck he aint...

I feel bad for my brother. Ivy reacts to him the same way Tia initially treated Uncle Buck in the classic film of the same name. (Note - this is actually Kim writing this post, not Mike, and is a testament to our marriage that I am now so intimately familiar with this movie.) Except instead of fighting back with stinging words (I recommend you stay out of my personal life!) Ivy uses tears and wails. It's a bizarre phenomenon considering she's pretty much the happiest baby we know.

It started a couple months ago - Mark had returned from spring training, so to be fair it had been a while, and came straight over to visit his favorite niece. She took one look at him from the floor in her room where she was playing happily, and burst into tears! I went to pick her up, and she buried her head in my shoulder, occasionally looking up to see if he was still there. We laughed at the reaction, until we realized she was not fooling around. Uh oh. Repeat the same scenario a week or so later, and pretty much every time since.

Mark sprained his ankle last weekend, so we've been trying to help out as much as possible. I had to work late the other night, so Mike went over with Ivy to help him take stuff out of the car and make him dinner. But no sooner had they crossed the threshold into his apartment when Ivy totally lost it. Mike tried to leave her there, with plenty of couch space to cruise along, while he went to help out, but Ivy was not having it. Needless to say Mark did not have tacos for dinner that night; he probably had to order a pizza.

On the one hand, it's rather amusing - she's totally pavlovian about it! Enter Mark, freak out. Remove Mark, calm. On the other, I really hope they get to know one another soon and she doesn't unleash a fury of stored up anger when we have him come babysit. "Hey, Mom. Next time you take off in the middle of the night, why don't you hire a murderer to watch the house?"

The good old days