Sibling Squabbling

My cute friend, April, invited me and my "kidlets," as she calls them, over to her house for a playdate today. She's so good - I have a long list of kids I should be inviting over to play, but every time I think of having more kids over, I think, "Holy crap, I can hardly handle my own three - how can I handle any more???" I really need to get over myself.

So we went over to her immaculate house (Seriously. Not a speck of dust anywhere, not one thing misplaced or cluttered) and played for a couple of hours.

My kids had a ball, because April has a sweet old-school swingset in her back yard. We're talking the kind that have a little gondola-type swing, where four teeny bumbs can sit on the little benches and swing all together. You know the kind I mean? It also has one of those little metal swing things where you just hang on with your arms and flip around. And then an old-fashioned teeny slide. Just being near this thing brought back so many great memories of our swingset growing up. It was awesome - white with orange and brown stripes - very eighties. I pushed Sadie in the gondola-swing for about a billion hours - she has the sunburn to prove it. That girl could swing all day. I couldn't. I have my dad's tendency toward motion sickness. Even IMAX movies make me ill. I often have to close my eyes during the airplane-swooping-through-the-canyon-and-barely-missing-crags-that-stick-out shots.

April also has sweet toys. Little pretend computers, complete with fake mouses; those neat ball things that open up and look like a big fighting cage, and then close up to a small pointy ball; and nerf guns.

Micah was... different. In a good way! I was like, "Who are you, and what did you do with Micah?" I fed him, and afterwards, he played on his back, pawing the air with his monkey feet and punching the air with his teeny fists, for like an hour, NO FUSSING. Seriously!! And then I picked him up to snuggle him, just because I felt guilty for neglecting him, and instead of arching his back, pawing at my chest with his needle-nails (newborn nails hurt soooo much), and snorting in anger, he just lay back on my arm, looked around, and fell into a contented sleep. I couldn't believe it!! Maybe this is the beginning of the end of colic? I sure hope so.

And April and I just chatted, because that's what we do best. We talked about giving our kids more individual time with us, about April's family, etc. It's so nice to have adult conversation every once in awhile.

I got a kick out of watching her two oldest, Goober, age five, and Missy My, age three (Apes likes to give her kids nicknames when blogging about them, and I'm respecting that decision here), fighting over toys and baiting each other. Not that I enjoy watching Apes suffer. :) But because my two oldest do the exact same thing EVERY SINGLE SECOND. It's enough to make a person go nuts. Just jogging on my treadmill yesterday for half an hour, I had to intervene in Dylan/Sadie altercations FIVE TIMES. I mean, come ON!! Can't I just jog for half an hour without Sadie trying to steal Dylan's seat, without Dylan shooting Sadie with his rubber band-propelled styrofoam airplane? It was nice to see that I'm not the only mom who has to deal with this on an every-second basis.

I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that Dylan doesn't chase Sadie around with a butcher knife. Word on the street is that Ben used to do that very thing to his older sisters. :) Now I see where Dylan gets it from, because it certainly didn't come from me. Apparently, I was the WORST BABY EVER BORN IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE (something my mom points out to me almost daily, and for which I apologize daily and profusely), but when I grew to a toddler, I became the peacemaker that I am today. I totally hate fighting, hate confrontation.

Dylan is the opposite. I think he actually enjoys fighting. He always tries to start fights with me about stupid things. He was trying to argue with me about his need for getting his immunizations today (all three kids got shots today - it's been a really fabulous day!!). Here's our conversation:

Dylan: "Mom, why do I have to get pinches?"
Me: "If you don't get pinches, then you could get sick. Do you remember how it feels when you have to barf, or when you have a booger nose?"
Dylan: "Yeah..."
Me: "Well, there are sicknesses that are worse than the barfies or booger noses. You could even die from them!!"
Dylan: "Nuh-uh."
Me: "Yeah-huh. It's true. And I would hate for my little man to die from a really bad sickness."
Dylan: "You can't die from being sick."
Me: "Yes you can."
Dylan: "No you can't."
Me: "Yes you can."
Dylan: "No you can't."
Me: "Whatever."

He also tries to bring up a fight that never existed. Something will happen, and Dylan will yell triumphantly, "I TOLD you so!!" And I'm like, "We never had a conversation about this, Dylan." And he's like, "Yes we did," and I'm like, "No we didn't," and he's like, "Yes we did..." and on and on and on. It drives me batty.

I always feel so crappy around extremely, extremely well-behaved kids! Like, "Geez, what am I doing wrong??" There's this gal (my age, with kids my kids' ages) that sits behind us in church, and her kids are, like, perfect, and she is, like, this perfect mom, and her hair is always done, and she's a size three, and her makeup is always perfectly applied, and she has gorgeous clothes, and she has this little quiet book all about Christ for her kids to learn from, and they always say thoughtful, spiritual things. Or she'll read to them during church in a soft whispter, and her kids are smiling and whispering little questions. It looks like those ads for the LDS church on TV - "Family. Isn't it about time??" And she's the one who raises her hand in Relief Society and says, "Well, when my family does scripture study..." or "In Family Home Evening the other night..." or "When my son says his prayers at night..." Ben home teaches this family, and he comes home, raving about the kids and how well-behaved they are, and how he can "really feel the spirit" there and I'm like, dude, I suck.

So I like girls who keep it real. They make me feel better!! (Not that April's house doesn't have the spirit in it. Because it does! And she is an amazing, very hands-on mom. All I'm saying is that her kids sometimes squabble, just like mine, and it makes me feel like what I experience is somewhat normal, rather than the freakish anomaly.) So thanks, Apes, for the conversation, for the yummy Otter Pops, and for having normal kids. :)