Avery Do It

Brayden is going through a phase I like to call “I want my big brother to do everything for me.” Except there’s one little problem—Brayden’s big brother is a cat.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I refer to Avery as Brayden’s fur brother. (If you’re a new reader, catch up with Fur Brother, Where Art Thou?, Toilet Paper Caper and The Adventures of A & B: Copycats) Avery was my first child, after all, and he’s a very loved member of the family.

Much of Avery and Brayden’s relationship up to this point has been either Avery being curious about Brayden or Brayden pestering/trying to love on Avery. Recently, though, Brayden seems to want Avery to actually do things for him. Things I would normally do! Here’s a list of the things Brayden has asked me “Avery do it?” and/or he’s directly approached his big fur brother to do in the past 48 hours:

1. Open up the package on his string cheese
2. Jump on my bed with him
3. Brush teeth with him
4. Peel a banana
5. Change the channel on the TV
6. Put on his sneakers
7. Ride in the rear bucket of his tricycle
8. Read a book

Hmmm…the fact that Avery is a cat poses a problem for each of these requests. In each situation, Brayden ended up trying to hand said object to the cat and Avery just sauntered away leaving Brayden perplexed. But then Brayden got creative and started asking for things that, in theory, Avery could do, like give kisses for example (Exhibit A is the picture above).

Brayden bumped his shin and got a boo boo. He pointed to it, said “Ow!” and I asked if he wanted me to kiss it. How do you think he replied? If you guessed, “Avery kiss it!” then you’re bright and picking up on the theme of this post.

So Brayden hikes up his pant leg, approaches Avery at his food dish and asks, “Avery kiss it?”

Avery just looked at him. Not to be deterred, Brayden wedges himself between the food bowl and Avery and tries again.

This whole time, Avery is just looking at Brayden like “What in the world are you asking me?” and eventually he walks away and plops down on the kitchen floor where—you guessed it—Brayden asks for a kiss a third time.

After try #3, Brayden finally let Mama kiss his boo boo and make it better.

I don’t want you thinking that all of Brayden’s requests go unanswered by Avery though. Avery comes when Brayden calls him to cuddle with us on Saturday mornings, and he’s always happy to purr and give kisses when Brayden offers him kitty treats. Plus, if Avery did all the things Brayden asked of him then it would put me out of the Mommy business!

I like this phase, and I think Avery secretly likes it too (especially when there’s cat treats involved) because it shows me how much Brayden loves Avery and sees him as a member of our family—our 2/3 human, 1/3 fur family.