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Poor Peppa Pig. One minute you’re the beloved daughter of the house – ruler of puddles, queen of the treehouse, absolute sociopath when it comes to insulting your dad (“Silly Daddy, your tummy is too big”) – the next, there’s a new piglet in town. And even worse: she’s cute, too.
Now that Evie’s joined the Pig family (is “Pig” their given family name? Unfortunate), Peppa’s going to have to grow up – fast.
The announcement that Mummy gave birth this morning, at 5.34am, to a baby girl named Evie, in honour of Mummy Pig’s aunt, is the first time a major new character has been introduced to the cartoon in decades. It comes after the bombshell that she was pregnant dropped in February. Cue a million beleaguered parents left facing that heinous and distressing question: “Where do baby pigs come from?” and muttering cringey comments about “daddy’s seed” and “special cuddles” and – in one friend’s case – “daddy wrestled mummy like in WWE”.
It’s a steep learning curve, becoming a big sister – and I should know.
When my brother was born, I wanted to exchange him for a chocolate bar. When my daughter learned she was about to welcome a new baby brother into the house, she sobbed hysterically and asked if we could “take it back if we didn’t like it”. (Spoiler: sometimes parents don’t like it, but that’s called “unconditional love”.)
Of course, Peppa should already be au fait with all things sibling rivalry: she’s been berating George for years – 20 of them, in fact, which is pretty weird, when you think about it. I mean, does George take his toy dinosaur to uni? Why is he always two?
But there is something different about a third baby coming years after you’ve got used to the family dynamic – when you’ve all bumped heads and sharpened elbows and, on one unpleasant occasion, even used an actual fork to work out where everyone’s favourite sofa seat is, who wins in the pecking order of the bathroom, and who gets the best Easter egg and why it will always be Mummy. Sorry, did I make it about me?
If I did, that’s because I was used to being the only child – and enjoying myself perfectly well, thanks, right until my baby brother came along in 1984. I still remember the sense of excitement when my dad told me he had a “surprise” for me and led me to the hospital (strange, but OK, perhaps that’s where Santa makes presents out of season) to visit my mum. I was over the moon because I knew – with every fibre of my four-year-old being – that they’d got me the Jem doll with flashing earrings. Actual red, light-up, flashing studs!
Except... it wasn’t Jem – it was just a baby that cried a lot and didn’t do much of anything really, except gurgle and vomit and wet its heavy cloth nappy (this was the eighties). And I wasn’t even allowed to pick it up in case I dropped it. Boring. Such crushing, vivid disappointment.
I remember the time my little brother hid behind a chest of drawers in my bedroom and accidentally got stuck there while I did some dramatic flouncing in floods of tears, shouted “I hate you”, slammed the door and flung myself on my bed like a Brontë heroine. After enduring several hours of weeping, he had to sheepishly reveal himself and pretended that he’d “accidentally fallen asleep back there”.
Then, there was the time I was charged with “looking after” my sibling with a friend, because we were 14 and supposedly “responsible” – but by the time my parents came home there were two broken lamps and a fractured skull. There was, of course, also the time he was having his first sleepover with his friends and I wanted to listen in to all their secrets, so hid a voice-activated dictaphone in his bedroom.
I did all the usual, awful, big-sister things: refused to play with him because I wanted to hang out with my friends, hit the roof when he read my diary, tortured him by sitting on his back and making him “tap out”, forced him to let me give him makeovers and also take pictures.
Ah, Peppa. It’s hard being the oldest, and you’re going to have to grow up now – but, then, you are about 25, so it was inevitable. Here’s the upside: just think about how you can blame Evie for all that mess from the muddy puddles.
And the real secret to being a big sister? By the time you don’t live together anymore, you actually miss them. Trust me. My “baby brother” is now my best friend. It just took us a while to get there.
English (US) ·