week ending may 27, 2007:

Week ending May 27, 2007: This week I took the kids strawberry picking and the kids were very excited about going to the strawberry field again, but didn’t really do much picking. When we arrived at the field Grammy Carole had already started to fill her box, so Alex and Chloe just filled their baskets from her box and started noshing which was fine because the object lesson wasn’t for the kids to work hard for their food, just to see where food comes from. Chloe doesn’t believe that she eats animals. I said what about chicken? And she said that the chicken she eats isn’t the animal chicken. I didn’t press the issue. We also went to a pig roast where there was a slip-and-slide. I remember our neighbor’s slip-and-slide when we lived on the Eastern Shore with no a/c. That thing really got a lot of use! Anyway, at the pig roast Chloe slipped and fell on the slip-and-slide and bumped her head, so she wasn’t fond of it, and Alex wouldn’t go fast, but he did use the slide frequently throughout the day. For the last few weeks I’ve been noticing that Alex tunes out most of what everyone says unless they say “Alex” and he turns around and looks at the speaker before they start speaking. Getting his attention is sometimes a chore. I find myself saying “Alex”, “AL-EX”, “ALEX!” quite a lot. I can’t really blame him though because he’s such a quiet kid and Chloe talks so much, I think he just has to tune everything out now and again to get some peace and quiet. The kids are really starting be good friends. Everyday Alex wakes up before Chloe and he likes a little quiet cuddle time with Mom and then he starts staying “when’s Chloe going to wake up?”. When Chloe gets tired or hungry and Alex tries to leave the room Chloe starts howling. When I ask her what’s wrong she cries “I need someone to play with”, and I’ll say “I’ll play with you” and she’ll cry “No! I need my brother!” She really gets heartbroken when he won’t play with her. I was talking to a friend who has 2 year old twins and she was saying how they fought all the time and she couldn’t stop refereeing long enough to pour a glass of iced tea before the fighting started up again. I do remember a time like that, but now the kids play nicely for long enough for me to get some chores done before I need to intervene or redirect them. They get lots of practice everyday negotiating with each other (“you be the prince and I’ll be the princess”, “no, I want to be Spiderman”), taking turns, and sharing. I’ve read that people learn much more from their siblings than they do from their parents because siblings spend more time interfacing with each other than they do with their parents. At this point that seems to be true.