Coveting & Sharing

Since I will never have an only child, I can only imagine how nice it must be to not have to constantly referee sibling fights. Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit, but my suspicion is that twin fights are the trickiest because you can't tell the older sibling to go easy on the younger since they are evenly matched- physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Lately Caleb has decided that he MUST have anything that is in Joshua's possession. For example, today each boy had the exact same blue blanket on their laps in the car (they have recently decided that they always want blankets on their laps while in their carseats). Well, they weren't sitting but for 30 seconds before Caleb flippantly cast his blanket on the floor and angrily demanded to have Joshua's blanket instead. Pointing out that both blankets were literally the same did no good. Today alone I had to referee similar skirmishes involving identical spoons, sippy cups, and the list goes on.

Fortunately Joshua has become very good at sharing. This evening he asked for juice so Mimi escorted him to the fridge to get a juice box. He first selected one, paused thoughtfully, then took a second box. When they came back to the living room, Mimi asked Joshua what he was going to do with 2 juice boxes. Joshua grinned and gave one of them to Caleb with an outstretched arm. He is also very good about finding things that he knows Caleb likes, such as his Thomas (or more recently, Sir Handel) train and giving it to Caleb. Sometimes Caleb is a gracious recipient, and other times he hastily chucks the gift and tries to grab whatever Joshua is holding in his other hand. *Sigh* I know that Caleb will come around evenutally!

In other news, the boys now like to say "sorry!" all the time, even when they haven't done anything wrong. They also say "yes, Mommy!" and "yes, Daddy!" so I'm hoping that we are making some inroads in cultivating polite young men. Oh, and they have continued to expand their fruit repretoire by developing a taste for clementines, which of course makes me very happy. For the longest time I would offer them a wedge and they would take a bite, suck the juice, and spit everything else out, but as of yesterday they have started eating the whole thing! "More orange?" they will ask. It goes to show that persistence is the key to breaking the habits of picky (and in our case, stubborn) eaters.