{Only the Beginning}

Remember this?

Remember my jubilation?  Excitement? Thrill?  You remember.  I know you do.

My kids have started into a phase of sibling rivalry.  Is that the term?  I'm not really sure.  We start (and sometimes end) our day much like the Family Circus cartoons.  You remember those, right?  "Jeffy's looking at me!!!!"

It's not so much rivalry as it is Mason likes to bug Ellie and Ellie likes to tell me how Mason is bugging her.  Maybe that is rivalry.  I hear a lot of "Mason is touching me." or "Mason is following me around."  or "Mason won't get out of my room."  

Oh I can hear you now..."Poor Mason."  But it has kind of become Mason's hobby to touch, follow and in general bother Ellie.  Everyone needs a hobby, right?  Her stuff seems cool to him.  She prefers he not touch her stuff.  She tells him to leave her alone.  In retaliation, he bugs her.  

This has been going on in families for centuries, right?

We also have a lot of "Mason is sitting too close to me."  or "Mason won't share the chair."  And yes, Mason is not as verbal about it.  His approach is more physical.  

Saturday morning about an hour before all of the shower guests arrived, Ellie and Mason decided to have a brawl in the living room chair that sat next to a small (perhaps not so steady) side table.  I told them to stop fighting.  I'm pretty sure my mom had said the same thing.  Then as our backs were turned, they each gave one more shove and knocked that lovely little pot off of the not so steady table.

It just so happens that Fire King Oven Ware shatters into about 9 million tiny shards of glass when it hits hardwood.  

I'm not proud of my reaction.  I was very angry.  Not so much because they broke the pot, more because sometimes I feel like I have done something terribly wrong in teaching them to take care of things and not act like wild animals inside.  I was also upset because I am SO OVER their bickering.  (And yes I know it is only the beginning.)  I apologized.

Payback is HELL.  HELL I TELL YOU.  Oh the fights Biz and I used to get into.  OH the bickering we did. You can't even imagine.  Really, you can't.  But if you want to email my mom I am sure she will tell you the saga.  

But, it was just a little pot.  A pot that wasn't even mine less than a week before.  It was pretty and I did like it.  But it was just a thing.  And I have pictures!

And they are only 4 and 2.  As I (often) tell Brandon, this is not the hill we will die on.  Their breaking a pot doesn't mean they have a complete disregard for all things.  

Some day, I bet Ellie will have china of her own that she will take care of.  And some day, maybe Mason will have a pocket knife collection he values and cares for.  And doesn't break.  (It could be the other way around.  I'm not trying to push stereotypes on them.)  

And hopefully they will be able to sit within 6 inches of one another and not play the "who can push back harder" game some day.  I think this might take a while and I pray we don't have any broken bones before that time.