The Science of Two

While Sydney's upbringing, up until the arrival of her sister, was fairly calm and orderly, Lauren's seems so far to be anything but. The baby is constantly barraged by a dancing, whirling, screaming apparition in the person of her big sister, and she has parents whose attentions are necessarily divided. Her whole environment is a cacophany of new and interesting things, way over accelerated, and also our memories are short, so it seems to us that Lauren's development is coming along faster than her sister. Almost as though she is already running to catch up. Our four month old grasps things excitedly and gets easily frustrated when they drop from view, and has already mastered the art of pushing up onto her hands and knees, and she watches with rapt attention when her sister takes a bath or jumps up and down on the couch. We all know intellectually that the experience of the second is different from the first, but it is fascinating to watch the pageant unfold minutely, like so:

After dinner, Sydney instructs Mommy to build a Lego tower that "won't fall down." Sydney knows what the end result of a stable building should look like but her attention span is such that the actual structure may have one or two (or all) important elements missing. So Mommy builds a tight rectangular building. Daddy and Lauren come into watch.

Once the main structure is built, Sydney begins to embellish with antennas and chimneys. She names the tower the "Ministry of Acting". Meanwhile Lauren, who has been watching this pageant unfold for a while, begins to wiggle excitedly. Daddy leans down with Lauren so she can partake of the fun, in her limited way. Lauren hesitates, and then reaches out with her little hands to touch and grab.

"No, Lauren!" says Sydney, who was never disciplined in such a formal manner until relatively recently and whose tone imitates the stern voice of her parents. "Don't touch the building!"

"Don't worry, honey," says Daddy, "she's just playing with it a little bit. Can't you play with Lauren?"

"No!" Sydney says. "she'll knock it down!"

"She won't knock it down, she's too little," Daddy says, and immediately Lauren makes an uncoordinated, desperate grab for the corner and knocks the tower down, belying both Daddy's recent assurance and Mommy's statement that she created a stable structure in the first place.

Lauren's eyes go wide. You could almost hear the brand new thought forming in her baby brain: I did that! I made it go down!

Stretched beyond endurance, Sydney hits Lauren on the head with a Lego, gets yelled at by both parents, and collapses in a heap on the floor, completely despondent. Lauren, seemingingly assessing the situation, starts to cry.

"Look!" we both say, almost in unison, "You made the baby cry! Say you're sorry!"

Sydney looks mortified. Lauren is still crying.

"Sorry," Sydney says finally, through obviously gritted teeth, her entire soul silently rebelling against the whole thing.

Lauren stops crying, and grins at her sister.

Sibling rivalry: so it begins.