These two!  They are thick as thieves and adore each other.  Where one is in the house, the other is never far behind – or rather, wherever Clare is then Sam is never far behind.  Clare is the leader of their little troupe.  She sets the games, makes the rules and referees the players.  Sam plays along, usually happily, to her rules.  Whatever Clare likes is just fine with Sam, which is just fine with Clare.  But lately I’ve noticed some of Sam finding his own voice and striking out on his own.  The other day I asked Clare if she wanted to color.  She said no, she wanted to look at books.  Rather than saying “I look at books too,” which is what I was expecting, Sam said “I want to do art!”  I asked him to repeat it, because it rarely happens that Clare says no to something and then Sam wants to do it.  I think Clare was surprised too and when I turned around I saw both of them drawing at the table.  Sammy asked “Clare, you make me a dinosaur?”  And Clare did.

While they get along happily 85% of the time, there is at least 15% of the time where they don’t get along.  They are loud shrieks of disagreement, wails of discord and a fair amount of tattling.  Sammy provokes reactions out of Clare and Clare doesn’t disappoint with her loud reactions.  Clare gets grabby and tries to push Sam around, and he reacts loudly.  They both want the same thing, whatever it is was previously ignored and now it’s precious.  Sammy does a little game sometimes in the car where he will reach a toy out to her and say “here you go Clarie.”  When Clare reaches for the toy he will gently pull it just out of her reach.  “Oh, sorry Clare.  Here you go.”  Shriek, reach and repeat.  Oy!  We have some loud moments in our house.  Then J looks at me and says “is this what siblings are like?”  Well, yep.