Rivalry

I had a hard time getting to sleep on Saturday night and had to get up at 6 AM with the baby on Sunday morning. (Honey gets up with him and Jelly on Saturday mornings.) Scooter is still nursing twice a night, so this isn't helping my rest. I can't remember when last I slept 8 hours solid. I was so exhausted on Sunday morning that I ached from head to toe and felt nauseated. Do you ever get that tired? When Honey got up, I went back to bed. For nearly 4 hours.

This made going to bed on Sunday night very difficult, right? So when an hour past bedtime rolled around, I took a Benedryl to help me sleep. I still got up with Scooter all night long, but in the in between times, I was able to rest. However when it was time to get up, I was still wrapped in luxurious drug-induced coma. Honey started wrestling children through the morning routine and I just laid there through the stomping and the running, mostly still asleep. (I realize this isn't a very positive portrait of me. Don't judge. I'm tired.) And then the yelling starts two feet from my open bedroom door....

Brother: Will you get out of the bathroom? I have to brush my teeth!

Jelly: ME FIRST!

Brother: FINE! Hurry up! Hurry UP! BRUSH YOUR TEETH!

Me: HOLYGODPEOPLE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP YELLING!

And then I crashed back into my pillow. Brother has a hard row to hoe. He is expected to look out for his little brothers, but then tends to be overly harsh with Jelly and veers into 'parenting' him. Only Brother's 'parenting' has basically no patience whatsoever and boy howdy does parenting Jelly require patience. Yes it does. It is not really unusual that Brother hasn't got this down. He's 10. And Jelly loves Brother the way a cat loves your black slacks. With an oozy, flowing let-me-rub-against-you-and-touch-you-even-though-you'd-rather-I-didn't feel to it. So there is much bickering, even though despite the 6 year age difference, they play together a lot, too.

And then you see Brother with Scooter. I love to look at his face when he is looking at the baby. It softens noticeably. He loves to hold the baby and play with the baby. (This is a relief to me because when I told him we were going to have another baby, he literally cried and said, "How could you do this to us?!? For reals.) Brother is very stern with Jelly (um, duh) when Jelly manhandles Scooter. Jelly wants to play! with the baby! too! Scooter mostly looks like a cat you are trying to bathe when Jelly plays with him. Like: "I don't know what is happening, but I know I don't like it and I can't figure out how to get away."

Is this what they mean by sibling rivalry? The constant yelling, hugging, bickering, and softness? Rough and tumble mixed with genuine affection, sometimes perhaps a bit too much? I don't actually know. I am an only child. My parents used to tell me they felt sorry for me. That I had missed so much. I think you can never miss what you haven't had, but I can imagine how things might have been if I had had siblings. The pleasant and not so pleasant; the mundane and the extraordinary, the having a witness to my childhood and having someone who might have looked like me in the world. I am glad we decided to have these brothers. These little boys with will fight and argue and hug and make up. Who will apologize and then run out and do it again. They won't have to imagine what it would be like to have a sibling. What a miracle, right?