But you're MY friend...

Holynd and Sloane.

They've become quite the duo.

The older Sloane gets, the closer they get.

The closer they get, the more problems seem to arise. I knew 18 months was close, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that, for girls, it's REALLY close. Girls seem to fight at any age and at any stage. Emotions run high for little girls, it seems.

Somethings they just learn to cope with. They no longer ask for one snack, they just ask for two - knowing full well that they'll have to give-up the extra snack.

All day long they play together. There a few times during the week where one will come to me and ask to lay on my bed. I'm not usually one to let them hang out in my room, but I've slowly began to understand what they're asking for.

Time Alone.

I feel dumb to admit this, but I really thought my job was to make them love each other ALL THE TIME. I'm supposed to make them get along all day every day, right??

Then one day I realized that if Matt and I spent all day every day together, we'd probably drive each other absolutely crazy.

So, I've had to get passed the fighting and the arguments.
A lot of the time, I just don't say anything when one of them gets mad and walks away from the situation. Actually, I've learned to just appreciate that. It's way better then the knock-down drag-out hair-pulling fights we've had in the past. ;)

I really thought Pre-School would fix most of the problems, but I quickly learned that it made things a little worse. The girls seem to miss each other and when Holynd gets home, both have a million ideas of what they should play first. Sloane wants to show Holynd what she's been doing while Holynd was away. Holynd usually wants to play something related to what they did at school that day. This creates immediate tension. I still haven't figured out how to fix this. I probably never will.

We've also had to establish ownership over quite a few things. We expect the girls to share, but not everything. Someone once said to me, "You wouldn't share your wedding ring. Would you?" No. I wouldn't. Somethings in this house just aren't shared. Mimi's for one have never been shared. There are a few stuffed animals that they aren't expected to share. We really had a dilemma on Christmas because we realized that we couldn't expect them to just NOT share any of their toys they got on Christmas... But if Santa gave them that certain toy, then what could we say about it? So, we had Santa put the presents all in the same place and basically just made sure they had to same amount to open. Santa also made sure that really popular gifts came in "two's".

I really thought I'd have the sister-thing figured out because I had two sisters growing up. We fought a lot. I was sure I could tolerate it and fix most of the problems just from what I remembered from growing up. Having the girls only 18 months apart has totally thrown everything I experienced out the window. Their relationship is on a whole other level then what I remember growing up and most days, I feel like all I did was referee their fights/arguments.

For how much they fight, they love each other twice as much.

I hope.