Sisterly Love

I'm not sure what it is exactly about my youngest daughter's head that her older sister finds so attractive. Isabella is like a moth to a flame when Grace is around. She's always running over to kiss her head, grab the sides of her face or be cheek to cheek. Its adorable, don't get me wrong, but after 5 hours or so of playing Grace's bodyguard, it starts to get a little old. See, Isabella isn't always so gentle, which I'm sure you can imagine. Trying to get Isabella to understand why she shouldn't touch Grace's head--at all-- might be a debate that I'll never win. She always has an appropriate and heart-string-pulling answer for me. Today as they were playing and Isabella ran over to grab Grace's head for the 50th time and I said not to for the 50th time, her response was "but she loves me". How could I argue with that? And honestly, Grace was smiling anyway.

The more I think about it, the more I try to run interference between them, the more it just doesn't make much sense. Obviously if she was really hurting her that'd be another story, but I'm talking about everyday, sisterly love and affection. They're going to fight and makeup for the rest of their lives (I should know, I have 3 sisters) and they are going to make fun of me for trying to appease them for the rest of my life. Anyway you slice it, as the mom I'll be to blame for something.

I don't know why it happens, but for some reason when you give birth you receive the gift of "too many thoughts". You think about long-term, short-term and every minute in between and how all of what you do, say and respond to every situation is going to affect your kids. At least this happened to me. As a result, I have now baptized myself the "absent minded professor". There are just too many thoughts in my head, and they are all peppered with a healthy dose of gulit and self-doubt. At the same time I'm pretty sure I'm a kick ass mom and I'm definately positive I'm doing my best. Now I just need to sit back, tell the voice in my head to get over it and watch as the love between my girls grows deeper--head kisses and all.