Jealousy Rears its Ugly Head

Yesterday wasn't the best of days. In fact yesterday may have made it in the top ten- What in the world was I thinking having these children- days. The girls were just having a serious obedience/respect problem. There are multiple stories that I could tell but I will give you a quick glimpse of the highlights: a bag of rice dumped on the ground, a bag of sugar dumped on the ground, and the vacuum cleaner taken apart and the bag emptied on the ground. I think those are a few.

Later, right before dinner, Lizzie got in trouble for putting her hands in the potatoes. Just as she got sent to time-out I looked over and saw Addie waiting for me to look at her. As soon as I did she poured her glass of water all over the same potatoes.

Because of the events of the day Nick started giving them a nice lesson on respect and listening to your parents for family night. It ended with Addie kicking Nick in the shins and several people in tears. At that point Addie informed me that she was so bad because I give Lizzie and Rachel attention all day long but I never give her any at all so she had to be bad. Most days that would have made me feel bad but yesterday after singing with her and reading with her and playing with her I didn't really feel too much grief over her statement.

At the end of the day we had a long talk about jealousy and getting attention for doing the right things though and then I sent her to bed. Before long Addie came back and said "I can't find Lizzie in our room." We had a lock on the door so Lizzie had to be there. We finally found her underneath Addie's bed sound asleep. We dragged her out after laughing and taking pictures. A couple of hours later we went to check on them and couldn't see Addie. Based on the day we knew exactly where she was; underneath the bed fast asleep.

I took out the camera and took a picture so I could show Addie in the morning that she was just as funny as her little sister and made a mental note to praise her just a little bit more.