Good Friends?

I think the boys like each other. I think. But usually their behavior towards each other is, well, contradictory. Sometimes they are wonderful playmates, occupying themselves side by side, and other times sharing a game or toy. Other times, like this afternoon, they inflict pain on each other, purposefully or not. Poor Elias has so many injuries. Today Kindred added to the list by whacking him across the ear with a plastic tube, leaving a blood blister and swollen bruise. (After deciding that ice would only make him hurt worse, and holding him until he calmed, I had to chuckle a little at his lopsided ears.) They are true siblings.

They are so different, and they respond so differently to life. But sometimes their responses to situations are really similar. Take last week, for instance. I told the story a few posts back about how we all were outside, and Kindred and Elias took turns singing and dancing on the deck steps. After they were done with their performance, they played in the yard. I was watching them, and I heard loud music come from a neighbor's house. I followed the sound with my eyes. Someone had opened a window and had their hands sticking outside, holding something with one hand and maneuvering something else with the other. I realized with shock as they placed that "something" on the outer windowsill and shut the window quickly that our quiet calm was about to abruptly end. I didn't want to take my eyes off the windowsill incase it was going to be a dangerous event and couldn't move fast enough to gather in my children before... I yelled, "BOYS IT'S GOING TO BE LOUD---" CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!!!

Their little bodies were on the move before they even knew it. They clung to my legs shaking from head to toe, heads thrown back, wailing. I knelt and held them tightly, and assured them that the noise, though loud and scary, was not going to hurt them and was over. I explained what had happened once they had stopped crying enough to hear me. They had calmed down after a few minutes but their grips remained vice-like on me. I had to carry them back out into the yard and point out the window where the firecrackers had been lit and placed before they would believe it was finished.

(Later that evening when Michael came home, Kindred was recalling the day's events, and he added this into the story: "Dada, we went outside and it was loud. It was the cracker fires. They were so so loud.")

But today's story is the keeper. I was, of course, vacuuming my bedroom, (because vacuuming has become my first choice chore these days) and the boys were watching from the doorway. Kindred is still very apprehensive of the "big zoomie" but he doesn't get hysterical anymore, and can usually stay a safe distance away to watch. Elias, on the other hand, has developed Kindred's fear, and inevitably begins to cry loudly when I turn the vacuum on, even if he's had fair warning from Kindred's counting: one-two-three! I try to ignore Elias, because if I don't, he clambers up into my arms and I have to hold him while I proceed, and he's heavy, so I try to avoid this if I can and hope he'll just get over it or go in another room. Today he stayed next to Kindred, crying hard. I worked my way around the room. At one point I glanced back. Elias was still crying, but softer, and Kindred's arm was around his shoulders, pulling him close. Kindred even had his cheek resting on Elias' head. Elias' arm was around Kindred's middle, and there they stood. Brothers. Comforting each other in times of trouble.

I could hardly stand the beauty of it.