Smile!

On Tuesday one of the little boys in the twins preschool class passed out helium balloons in honor of his 2 week old baby brother that came home from the NICU this week. The twins were all smiles, as were the balloons, and they gleefully climbed into the car seats. We set off for home and the giggles and shrieks continued as they batted the balloons around the back seat. Then all the sudden tears. Great big crocodile tears from Abby. "Please, Tom, give it back to me!" I'm thinking, he took her balloon, or they got tangled. They are identical so how does she know he has it. How does she recognize her balloon apart from his? The screams continued as she insisted the balloon Tom was holding belonged to her. She wouldn't take her balloon into the house, I had to do it for her. She literally fell to the floor inside, kicking, screaming, big tears and demands about how Tom has her balloon.



I tried to settle this by writing names on the balloon weights. Usually when something has their name on it, they have a way to distinguish it from the other all by themselves and these types of confrontations dissolve. But not today. Even after the names were written, she remained a blubbering mess insisting she had the wrong balloon. What's a mother to do? Switch the balloons of course. I slyly pried Tom's balloon out of his hands and unbeknownst to him, untied it from the current weight and made the switch. At that moment Abby came sniffling back into the living room and grabs the wrong balloon. Now she has the balloon she was so sure wasn't hers and it has Tom's name on it! Tom was not a happy camper. He wanted the balloon with his name on it, and rightfully so! Off Abby stomped with more tears. At this point I'm lying on the floor looking up at these balloons trying to figure out how she is distinguishing them from one another. They seemed identical to me.

I ended up starting a movie and once she settled to sit and watch it I brought her her balloon. And they've been happy ever since!

In other exciting adventures, I walked the twins to the park on my own today. Big feat considering my current state of illness. They were so happy to be there and had a good time until Abby literally ran into one of the structures head on, with her head. Ouch. Before that though, they were climbing up a spiral structure and it scares the crap out of my to watch them do this. Tom was very able and crossed over from the spiral pole to the play structure most of the time. The crossing over point is as tall as I am, over 5 feet off the ground, so it's scary for me to watch him shake and tremble as he stretches across the gap between the structures. Abby could climb the spiral but she couldn't coordinate the move to the structure without my assistance. And once Tom climbed too high, and couldn't climb down, so I had to pluck him off from inside the structure myself. I think I'm going to discourage them from playing on that portion of the park next time.