A Single Parent ... Again
I guess you can totally tell when I'm going it alone as there are fewer blog entries.
Sasha is basically a very sweet boy. He is constantly worried about the welfare and equality of others i.e. if he's up then we obviously need to go in and get Mia up. If we're fixing him a snack, he will often remind me to fix Mia a snack too. He is the mayor after all. He loves to snuggle with you, give hugs and smoochies and worries when Mom is mad at him.
The social worker mentioned that I need to really watch the relationship between Mia and Sasha. I need to make sure that Mia isn't doing something that is really bad to Sasha to provoke him as little sisters apparently are known to do these kind of things. My thought up until that point was that Sasha gets irritated at Mia and occasionally wallops her or takes her toy or fill-in-the-blank-with-some-other-thing-that-makes-her-wail. Yesterday, I had the chance to see an altercation play out first hand that supports my original theory. Mia had one of Sasha's shoes from the shoe mat. She likes to play with shoes (as does he) and we had already discussed that it was okay for her to play with this one since he already had his blue crocs on. He had agreed and things were fine .. or so I thought. I watched him take the little red, plastic shoe out of her hand and bop her on the head with it. That landed him in time out where many tears were shed. He came out of time out and we discussed how we don't hit people. Did he understand? He said 'yes'.
A few minutes later, I went into the bathroom. Normally I don't discuss bathroom visits but this is important as to completely understand our household you have to understand some bathroom history. When our boxers were little, I never allowed them to be left alone in the house as no good come of it. If I left them for a second for a bathroom break, they would have an accident in the house. So .. I decided the solution was to have them join me in the bathroom. This worked great .. no accidents and they got a few pets while we were in there and we were good to go. Fast forward four years later. Sasha arrives and you can't just leave him wondering the house alone and he sees that Blake is having a good time in the bathroom when Mom goes potty so he joins us. And, now, with Mia, she joins us too (it's a good thing we have nice size bathrooms!). The down side to this is that I NEVER get any privacy. Even when Nathan's home, everyone feels compelled to join me for bathroom breaks. And, no, we don't do anything fun in there and there's no candy or anything. If I manage to make it into the bathroom with just Blake (he is totally at my side 95% of the day), Sasha will bang on the door and try to open it to join us. Crazy!
So, we're all in the downstairs bathroom, the whole throng of us, and Sasha always gets to flush the toilet. He also enjoys turning off the light. I exit, Blake exits and I see Sasha turn around and start to close the door closely watching Mia's reaction to being alone, in the dark and getting ready to be locked in the bathroom. Sasha just seems to revel in torturing his sister! And, by now, I'm sure you've all seen the headlock picture so you can be assured that it's true. So, he lost fish shopping yesterday and had to be satisfied with seeing the fishies but not being able to add them to our aquarium.
My mother assures me that this is just a normal part of the big brother / little sister relationship. She also assures me that Memama (my Dad's mom) can tell me hours of stories about injustices done to little sisters in the Platt family. I'm not sure if convincing your little sister that she can fly, tieing a sheet around her neck and pushing her off the roof makes me feel any better about our future!
Sasha is basically a very sweet boy. He is constantly worried about the welfare and equality of others i.e. if he's up then we obviously need to go in and get Mia up. If we're fixing him a snack, he will often remind me to fix Mia a snack too. He is the mayor after all. He loves to snuggle with you, give hugs and smoochies and worries when Mom is mad at him.
The social worker mentioned that I need to really watch the relationship between Mia and Sasha. I need to make sure that Mia isn't doing something that is really bad to Sasha to provoke him as little sisters apparently are known to do these kind of things. My thought up until that point was that Sasha gets irritated at Mia and occasionally wallops her or takes her toy or fill-in-the-blank-with-some-other-thing-that-makes-her-wail. Yesterday, I had the chance to see an altercation play out first hand that supports my original theory. Mia had one of Sasha's shoes from the shoe mat. She likes to play with shoes (as does he) and we had already discussed that it was okay for her to play with this one since he already had his blue crocs on. He had agreed and things were fine .. or so I thought. I watched him take the little red, plastic shoe out of her hand and bop her on the head with it. That landed him in time out where many tears were shed. He came out of time out and we discussed how we don't hit people. Did he understand? He said 'yes'.
A few minutes later, I went into the bathroom. Normally I don't discuss bathroom visits but this is important as to completely understand our household you have to understand some bathroom history. When our boxers were little, I never allowed them to be left alone in the house as no good come of it. If I left them for a second for a bathroom break, they would have an accident in the house. So .. I decided the solution was to have them join me in the bathroom. This worked great .. no accidents and they got a few pets while we were in there and we were good to go. Fast forward four years later. Sasha arrives and you can't just leave him wondering the house alone and he sees that Blake is having a good time in the bathroom when Mom goes potty so he joins us. And, now, with Mia, she joins us too (it's a good thing we have nice size bathrooms!). The down side to this is that I NEVER get any privacy. Even when Nathan's home, everyone feels compelled to join me for bathroom breaks. And, no, we don't do anything fun in there and there's no candy or anything. If I manage to make it into the bathroom with just Blake (he is totally at my side 95% of the day), Sasha will bang on the door and try to open it to join us. Crazy!
So, we're all in the downstairs bathroom, the whole throng of us, and Sasha always gets to flush the toilet. He also enjoys turning off the light. I exit, Blake exits and I see Sasha turn around and start to close the door closely watching Mia's reaction to being alone, in the dark and getting ready to be locked in the bathroom. Sasha just seems to revel in torturing his sister! And, by now, I'm sure you've all seen the headlock picture so you can be assured that it's true. So, he lost fish shopping yesterday and had to be satisfied with seeing the fishies but not being able to add them to our aquarium.
My mother assures me that this is just a normal part of the big brother / little sister relationship. She also assures me that Memama (my Dad's mom) can tell me hours of stories about injustices done to little sisters in the Platt family. I'm not sure if convincing your little sister that she can fly, tieing a sheet around her neck and pushing her off the roof makes me feel any better about our future!
Labels: Big Brothers and Little Sisters
posted by Tamara at 2:05 PM
3 Comments:
I am an only child -- so I missed out on this fun!
Are you foretelling my future? David traveling and my sanity unraveling slowly from the toilet. I understand completely the no potty privacy. It is usually me, Libby, and Jack all in there together. I am mystified at how David almost always manages to go alone. hmmm... Let's all say prayers that Sasha and Jack both take a more humanitarian stance towards their sisters. : )
I am no help......my 2 boys fight like cats and dogs, irritate each other just for the fun of it (both of them do it equally). They are 7 and 4. I'm hoping one of them will bond/unite with their baby sister when she comes home in a special way and take the "attention" off of each other. They will both be so much older than her.........I'm hoping that helps too. My oldest seems to think he will be her "protector", so I'm going with that and maybe if he is busy being enamored with her.........he'll leave his little brother alone?
I think I'm in for more trouble, LOL!
Hugs,
Angie
P.S. My only sister is 8 years older than me.......so we didn't really have these issues.
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