Meredith Carson... Across the Pond and Back Again...

So there we were in an average, over-priced hotel room while buckets and buckets of rain dumped down on the outside world.  We were just about to put on our bathing suits and head down to the unexceptional hotel swimming pool when my oldest daughter blurted, without thinking, "I don't even mind having a baby sister if I still get to go swimming with my Mom!" I wondered how long she had been waiting to say something like that.  Earlier that afternoon the two of us had climbed into the car and driven less than an hour away where we checked into a hotel and headed out to do some shopping.  She had hardly stopped talking since we left the house.  At one point she paused to take a big breath and then carried on telling me about everything important that happened in fourth grade, things I had never even imagined.   There weren't any toddlers to chase or sighing eight year olds to console.  All of my attention was focused...

Once upon a time things were easier at my house.  Sure there were more diapers to change.  There were even more messes to clean up and there was lots of urgent "Feed Me Now, Mama" crying, but when we had two children under the age of two, everybody loved everybody ALL of the time.  (The littlest one didn't know she loved everybody, but I'm sure that love was in there.) Today things are less labor intensive but far more emotionally complicated.  Today those two girls are seven and nine.  They share the same space, hunger for the attention of the same haggard mama, and they look at life through the lenses of very different personalities.  (Don't forget the fact that we have also added another very spirited, cutie-pants baby sister to the equation.)  One moment Emma and Sophie may be lying on their tummies, side by side, coloring a beautiful picture together, and the next moment they are furiously screaming at each other.  This is foreign to me sin...