The Ultimate Love/Hate Relationship

The other night we were watching Amazing Race. One of the teams this year is a sibling team of 2 brothers. I can't remember the specific task but obviously they were hurrying and in the midst of it one said to other "Shut up, moron!" Bryan commented that it's perfectly fine for two brothers to say this to one another. If the husband/wife team or the dating couple team or even the "best friends since college" team had said this we probably would have been thinking what a jerk they were. I mean a husband calling his wife an idiot? You can picture how offensive it is. But in this case it was totally fine, in fact it was almost endearing since you can tell these brothers are very good friends and 90% of the time are perfectly civil to each other. And about 3 minutes later they are totally friends again, no apologies needed, they probably both didn't even remember the word moron was used at all.

There is something about the sibling relationship that allows for huge swings between love and hate all within a span of minutes. I see this firsthand about 50 times a day. Thankfully the percentage of love (i.e. playing without either one screaming at each other) is increasing. In fact, I think they might actually like each other. Wonder of wonders! And more than that, they depend on each other. Amos with Molly at the park will run and play for hours. Without Molly? He's a clingy little thing who is scared to go down the slide by himself.

Yesterday we went with Molly to school for a field trip to the music store. We walked in and Miss Crystal told all the kids to sit down on the rug for circle time. Molly ran half-way to the rug, then remembered Amos was with her.

"Come on Amos," she said, as she took his hand and led him to the rug. She showed him where to sit and watched while he sat down. Then she sat down next to him, put her arm around his shoulder, and scooted him over to sit closer to her. Now I just need to figure out the magic solution to getting this to continue. Because this kind of stuff? Is pretty incredible.