Solidarity

After we had finished dinner tonight, the girls were scampering about and playing, bringing us shoes or toys, and telling us with their eyes whenever they wanted a hug. It was a pretty normal evening. A nice evening. And then something really funny happened.

Elizabeth reached up and grabbed one of the remote controls off the little table next to my rocking chair — something that she knows she isn’t supposed to do. Janet noticed right away, got up and said “No honey, please don’t play with that.” And as you might expect, when Janet took it away and replaced it on the table, Elizabeth launched into a little pouty fit — she plopped down on the floor, flung herself backward (bonking her head a little bit), and she began a whiny tantrum sort of cry. This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, but we’ve seen it before. By itself, this would be only mildly amusing at best.

Now, Carolyn was standing perhaps ten feet away at the time, and was completely involved in doing her own thing. I’m not even sure if she saw what happened with the remote control. But when she saw Elizabeth plop down on the floor and start crying, Carolyn marched right over to her sister’s side, and in an amazing and somewhat touching display of sisterly solidarity, she plopped down on the floor right next to Elizabeth and started up crying as well!

Janet had to turn her face away to hide her laughter. I just sat there wide-eyed and watched the two of them, lying on their backs, side by side on the floor, kicking their little feet and crying furiously — and all I could think was oh great, they’ve already learned to gang up on us.