Yin & Yang

As an only child myself, I have always been fascinated to see how siblings with the same parents, growing up in the same house, can turn out so different! People always comment on how much my girls look alike, but I have been able to tell from early on that they have totally different personalities.

One recent illustration of this came up on Friday during our trip to the zoo. Our littlest girl was in the creek, walking along having fun, when all of a sudden she tripped and fell knee first onto the concrete "creekbed." My husband and I both grabbed for her and we both immediately thought this was the end of our fun day because that HAD to hurt! We picked her up and sure enough she had cuts all over both knees. But you would only know that from looking -- she did not cry at all, and it did not slow her down at all either! She was ready to go play on the playground! And not only that, but she was climbing up to go down the slide and kept crawling around the top of the jungle gym on her injured knees! Even when we cleaned her up with wipes, she did not make a peep -- you would not know she had ever been hurt.

Her older sister on the other hand... Earlier that morning they were sitting together at the table coloring with markers. My older daughter looks at me, panic-stricken, and points to a little red dot on her finger. She says (very dramatically), "Mommy, is this marker or am I BLEEDING???" I said, "Honey, I'm sure it's just marker." It wiped right off and all was well!