Siblings

How many of you have siblings? Do you remember what your relationship with your siblings was like when you were growing up? Were you the siblings that got along and never gave your parent/s any grief? Or were you the siblings that caused your parent/s all their grey hair, lol. For me, my siblings and I were that latter group that caused our parents their grey hair. I'm not going to say that we were outright bad or mean or disrespectful, but we certainly gave our parents their share of grief. I remember all three of us being in trouble and sitting in our doorways while our parents waited for someone to fess up, or apologize to each other for being mean or, I'm not exactly sure what we did, to be honest, lol. But I do remember sitting in the doorways of our rooms not being able to move for nothing. We were never hateful towards each other, we just fought more than got along. This other time, when we were older, I got mad at my middle sibling and threw a candle at his head... I missed and it put a hole in the wall. We played baseball and softball, we both had an arm, and I was mad. I did learn how to spackle pretty good from that. Since I know my mom will read this, if you didn't know and now you do, I love you and it wasn't my fault! :)

Now, on to my two wonderful and just super awesome amazing teenage children. I wanted us to go out to dinner and just have a nice family evening, not too much to ask for, right? I didn't think so, but I was certainly proven wrong. I swear you would have thought I was asking one to give the other a kidney! I came home from work and, since it is also Friday the 13th I got a tattoo, wanted to take them out to dinner. Simple enough, right? WRONG. "I wanted to sit in the front!" "Don't touch me!" "Mom, I don't want Rudy's!" "UGH can we just go home?" I offered to take them back home and cook a cauliflower pizza for them, but that is completely nasty, so of course that was out of the picture. We get to Rudy's, and I said they could get whatever they wanted, would make most kids happy, ehhh, not so much. It lifted their mood a little, but they both kept their little squishy sour faces on. We finish eating with me having to remind them to "be nice, we're in public" only twice. When we go to leave, like, we are in the car and I am about to back out of our parking space when my daughter says "mom, we have to pick up my friend from her house and she's spending the night". Her friend is the absolute sweetest person, and I didn't mind at all, I honestly thought it was comical and just the best timing ever lol.

Once we got home, lol, I laugh because thinking about it now makes me chuckle, none the less, it was interesting. My kids decided that would be the best time to fight and yell and argue and I wanted to pull my hair out. Instead of what I used to do, which was yell at the top of my lungs, I took a moment to center myself and brought them both into my room (after I apologized to my daughter's friend) and made them talk it out. I played mediator basically. I kept a calm head (as calm as I could be), only let one talk at a time until they both apologized to each other, hugged and all three have been doing nothing but laughing and having a good ole time ever since.

Even now, as I struggle to stay awake to finish this, I can hear them all laughing, and it makes my heart smile. My children and I have come such a long way, and I am so incredibly proud of all of us. Sometimes, the best thing we can do, is take a moment to center ourselves before addressing something with our children. They feed off of our emotions, and the calmer we can be, the easier talking things out will be for them. It is not an easy thing to do, it takes practice and forcing yourself to do what is not your norm, but please believe me when I say, that it is so worth it.