Springtime of the Sisterly Soul

Don't tell Elise I'm borrowing
her hat! But how could I not
when it looks so cute on me?
Besides, the baby had one...

The first time you see your young children engaging each other in activities other than grabbing and fighting, it is like the first day that springtime's warm hope peeks in through your windows. The whole house looks cleaner, the air smells clearer and you no longer want to crawl into bed and stay there for months at a time. It's also quieter, without as much crying and for a moment you can hear a bird chirp.

This phenomenon is called play. It is often a social activity. And it is taking its first few breaths between my two youngest as they emerge from their cocoons of "I want what she has!" Deep breath.

Kalina, who calls the shots without knowing she calls the shots, has not minded ceding a healthy amount of her domain to the littlest one (besides, isn't she cute?), but Elise, who often has to resort to whining to get any attention (or so she'd like you to believe) has understandably dug in her heels at any request to share either Mommy or the family room rug ever since Naomi was big enough to scoot herself around and claim some of the territory.

One snowy weekend, we all made a
fairy mermaid placemat, thus anchoring
my spot as "The Best Mommy in
the World" (their words, not mine!)

But despite the shortcoming of being shorter and 1, Naomi, in her sisters' eyes, and especially the eyes of her littler big sister, is magically transitioning from being a near-constant threat to precious toys and a usurper of Mommy's arms and attention to an actual person who can play sea creatures and actually swim the fish around the same way she does.

This is huge, because of how far we've come and what it means. This little development has not come easy: it has taken minor bribery, constant vigilance, and a lot of outright flattery. "Wow, Naomi thinks you're just amazing, and she looks like she loves sea animals as much as you do! Look how she wants to copy everything you do because she thinks you're so great!"

At four, flattery is huge. It also helps when your little sister eases off her biting phase, and can say "purple" pretty well.

Kalina's Great Wall of China,
complete with Emperor
palace and throne. No
forced labor required. (In the
background, check out the
much-adored kids-around-the
world paper dolls she made.)

All of the efforts seem to be working, because Elise only protested a little last time the three of us (minus Kalina, who was off building the Great Wall of China for a raging emperor) played sea creatures a little, and the two littles even manged to continue playing a few minutes in a row after I crept away. Added bonus: it ended in neither happy nor sad screams.

In fact, Elise recently learned not only to skip, but that Naomi might possibly be a viable option as a playmate when Kalina is busy. In theory. It may be a while before she regularly turns to her little sister, although Elise's social nature might require it when she exhausts her other options. I'm working on grouping them together in subtle ways to speed this process along ("Kalina is going to do her math and can't play, but Elise, you have another sister you can play with! Wow, lucky you! Here she is now!"). I'm also contenting myself with peaceful ignoring.

Until a week or so ago, this idea was completely off the table, as Naomi was only good for tickling and being used as a plaything herself ("We can stack things on the baby!"). And I can't entirely blame Elise: Naomi is not innocent of mischief, including putting cherished toys into her mouth, objecting entirely to anyone reading a book that's not of her direct and immediate choosing and occasionally even snatching at toys. (Elise has been known to pull most of these stunts as well, as recently as today.) Bad behavior doesn't earn you friends, so all sisters have had to learn and re-learn the ancient art of Getting Along.

Elise is making a book of art.
If you think that's cool, you
should see her wall of art.

It's also a feat of branding: while Naomi still looks like a baby and often acts like a baby, I am attempting to remember, at least 20% of the time, not to refer to her as "the baby," so that the girls might realize she's a person, too (easier for Kalina, at the top of the pecking order, than Elise). I spend many minutes of every day trying to convince Elise, especially, that:
-She's not trying to get her sea creatures.
-Usually when she picks up her sisters' stuff, it's to bring it to them (true!).
-Even if she didn't, she wouldn't break the stuff because she's big now ("No she's not, she's little! I'm big!" retorts Elise in her biggest voice).
-Even if she did, we would fix it.

Elise is still mostly frantically unconvinced, despite my assurance that she used to be on the other end of the equation at a similar age and stage and came out of it just fine, to develop into the highly mature girl she is today.

Fortunately, Naomi plays her role, as the sweet little silly sister willing to go along with anything, very well. Eager to join in her sister's play, she'll happily mimic whatever goings on look fun and interesting, so long as she isn't super-absorbed in feeding her puppies, that is.

Sledding down the street.
Mush, Daddy!

Like her big sisters, Naomi runs circles on the rug to music (this is a triple favorite, and the bigs are even well-practiced in dodging the giddy gyrations of their toddler sister), flies animals around the house, practices gymnastics and parrots all the weird noises her sisters make, which is a lot. Naomi is quite adept at mimicry, and equally adept at getting smiles and laughter for her best efforts, despite a prejudiced reluctance on one or both sisters' parts. It really is cute, even though I know I'm in store for lots of mischief as they all get older.

Naomi also, by the way, happily mimics me as I sweep, clean, empty trash cans, cook and all the rest of my mommy work. As such, she is much more likely to pitch in and help out than her big sisters, although Kalina can often be convinced to do interesting kitchen work, and Elise will clean windows at a rate of 10 cents a piece (only the bottom half, but that takes us past the drool/handprint line so it works out) as she saves up for--you guessed it--more sea creatures.

And at this moment in time, Naomi is really good at all kinds of play, even toddleresque pretend play, or maybe it's just because she hasn't (yet) been tainted by all their sibling weirdness, the same that haunted my own siblings and I as we developed our own strange sense of humor, and that has forged sibling bonds since the beginning of time.

Sharing Grandpa's lap!

Either way, Naomi is a clean slate that I know will get drawn all over (literally if not figuratively), but that doesn't make too many dumb jokes yet, that doesn't think play = making loud noises and that doesn't invent all kinds of unfathomable and strange rules: "No, you can't move Elise's sea creatures because they have all just been born and are scared of you because you're big--look at how scared of you they are!" or "Mommy, be careful! You can't walk there or you'll fall into the hot lava and get eaten by a shark!" and even more stuff I get wrong all the time that's too weird to remember and changes anyway. The big girls will wreck all that soon enough, but for now, she's sweetly innocent of anything weirder than pretending to feed herself a dog bone.

Not that I don't have a special place in my heart for every single work of my kids' imagination, because I really do. Except for the non-sensical knock-knock jokes; those are awful but I can't find any grounds to put a stop to them, so my best resort is to sic them on each other. "Kalina, aren't you going to answer the door, Elise is knocking!" Then they can both laugh hysterically at terrible jokes and I can pretend I don't hear. (If you think I'm being too hard on the jokes, I'll have one of the girls give you a call...)

Kalina practicing one last
time before her amazing
piano performance at the
annual recital.

At any rate, I can safely say that at least 3 out of 4 of us would vote to keep Naomi, and while the last would prefer to keep her in a closet and pull her out on a whim, I am encouraged by the rays of hope I see that the relationship will thaw over the next season or year or decade or so.

And with real spring around the corner--and its flowers to maim together and puddles to get covered in, the sisterly relationships are sure to only blossom.

Check out that grip! Naomi could craft
all day, and asks for supplies like tape
and glue by name.

Homeschool PE. Lisa (the
cherished stuffed lamb) is
wearing her "snowsuit," and
in the background by the tree
you can see the little snow
slide Kalina made for her.

Elise likes to invent recipes,
such as spaghetti dipped in
honey, and then share them!
This one, called Coral Reefs,
consists of crackers, peanut
butter, marshmallows and, of
course, Goldfish. She is
writing a recipe book.

Elise dressed herself. Also,
she's starting to draw people!
(See the fridge)