Mom, make them stop!

My oldest son and daughter are two years apart in age. I don’t know if any other parents will agree with me, but there are benefits and disadvantages to having two kids. You go through a period of shock when the workload is doubled and you’re trying to juggle a new baby with an older sibling. You think, How in the world am I going to do this? There’s no schedule. Things are crazy, and you wonder why you ever agreed to this.

But then comes a magical moment, when they’re both toddlers. One day, the craziness gets better and something amazing happens: They start playing together. And, oh joy! Oh rapture! You can actually start getting things done because they are happily entertaining each other. It’s amazing.

Until the fighting starts. :boxing:

One minute, everything is daisies and happy faces. And the next, they’re at each other’s throats. Call it rivalry, call it competition, but man oh man, when they love each other, they will hate each other with the same fierceness. Yesterday, I was in the kitchen. The baby was playing with tupperware and a wooden spoon while the older two were in the living room sitting in a chair together. It started innocent, with them giggling and my daughter sitting on my son’s lap. Then it broke into playful wrestling and each of them trying to take over the chair. The next thing I knew, I heard the cries of: “He hit me!” and “Mom, she bit me!”

Yes, my darling daughter decided to fight dirty and broke the skin. Gotta say, she picked a pretty vicious spot, too, the skin below the armpit. Ouch. So she got sent to time-out until dinner while I iced and put neosporin on my wounded son. He played out the role to the hilt, whimpering that he couldn’t cut his meat because he had to hold the ice pack on his shoulder. :hissyfit:

I sent my daughter to bed right after supper, and although she did apologize numerous times to my son, I suspect that she’s just the kind of girl who will do whatever it takes to win a fight. And Lord help anyone who tries to hurt her brothers (and vice versa).

Did you fight with your brothers and sisters when you were growing up? Did you ever draw blood?