Siblings...

As an only child the whole sibling relationship is relatively foreign to me. Don't get me wrong, I have a huge family who I am very very close to, but I have no experience of sharing the same parents, the same home, the same experiences with another person.

I suppose I had never really given it that much thought. I didn't have a brother or sister so the family dynamics between a brother and a sister had never really interested me I guess. That all changed when we decided that our family of three should become a family of 4. One of my best friends in the whole world used to tell me that having a second child was the "very best gift you could give to your first child" and at the time i believed her but I didnt' really understand it. That has all changed now.

To watch my two babies together constantly amazes me. They are so different yet so exactly the same. They crinkle their noses the same, they have the same expressions when the sleep, and even the pitch of their voices are the same when they really get loud...

They are the sweetest things to watch when they are getting along. They will hold hands and hug each other. Lil wants to be right with her big brother and doing whatever he is doing and usually that thrills Noah to death.

Unless it doesn't...the then all you-know-what can break loose. "She's messing up my stuff.." She's stinky...she took my food...to which Lilly just replies with a screams and tears...and then five seconds later they love each other again. I'm serious I think they can go from hating one another to being best friends again in 2 seconds flat. Everyone tells me this is normal and that it will get worse so I'm trying to adjust!!!

Noah is amazing to watch as a big brother. He loves to read to Lilly and play with her and to try and teach her stuff and she usually goes along with whatever he is trying to show her. He will even attempt to try to help her get cleaned up and dressed for the day.

After we found out that Lilly had food allergies (egg allergy) too, I went through a little shall we call it "bitter" spell. I was in total feel-sorry-for-myself-mode and kept telling myself that it just wasn't fair. I already had one baby who had to suffer with food allergies, why did my second baby have to have it too? And then not too long after that it occured to me, that Lilly's food allergies just help Noah to feel "normal" at home. When Noah can't have the birthday cake at his friend's parties he used to be all alone, now he shares his special cupcakes with his sister. He even asked me the other day if a snack he was going to share was "safe" for Lilly to eat too. He is becoming more independant at taking take of his own needs by learning how to help protect Lilly from the foods that would make her sick.

Anyway, they just amaze me how they interact with each other and I hope that they will be close when they grow up. I'm sure they will go through long long spells where they are not as close to each other, but in the long run I hope that they end up best friends.