Friends or Foes?

As parents, I think we make a lot of decisions on how we perceived our lives growing up. As the youngest of 4 and with 2 working parents, some things were great and some things not. Not to criticize my parents, but I find myself, at times, being more firm or lax in a decision based on how I was raised. For example, we didn't get sugar cereal growing up. The sweetest sugar I remember having was honey nut cheerios, O's and Clusters. So, I find myself buying Apple Jacks and Cap'n Crunch every now and then with a feeling of luxury.

It's funny the things you think. For example, my friend Hillary thinks grape jelly is for poor people. When you ask her why, she says, I don't know...we never had it in our house growing up and for some reason she thought grape jelly was for poor people. So, I think it's really funny when things like that creep up in our lives.

Back to the main point, I have a fear that my boys won't like each other when they grow up, so I try to work hard to not make life a competition for them. Because they're so close in age, I think they see each other as peers more than siblings. There are times now when they do play together. I even let them get into "trouble" together because they're doing it together. James has realized that Ryan will do almost anything, so James has become a bit of an instigator. Ryan, touch this. And then there are times when tears are shed and someone gets hurt. But my favorite thing the boys do is to make each other laugh. This mostly happens when they are playing the fall down game. They run around and fall down and apparently this is pretty funny.

I can see that I'm rambling, so I'll end this post with, I'm very excited to see my boys play together. I'm also very excited to see how Olivia fits into the scope of things.