I love both my children equally and unconditionally. However, I'm not sure how a set of parents could produce two children who look similar yet are such polar opposites. My son, Daniel is one of the most mellow, laid-back souls you'll ever meet. Picture a 12-year old Matthew McConaughey on Xanex and you get the picture. M-E-L-L-O-W. Honestly there is only one thing that can stress that kid out and that's his sister.
Ellie at age 10 is more high strung than Sharon Stone with a gun to her head. Her temper can go from 0 to 50 in a millisecond. If things aren't going swimmingly, it's although she has been possessed by David Banner himself. Clearly my son takes after his dad and my daughter takes after me. The thing that worries me is that I was pretty carefree as a kid. It took me till I was well into my late 20's to become a high-strung neurotic.
Her mood swings are almost always set off by one thing: Her brother. He can look at her, sit by her, sneeze or just walk in the room and she inevitably acts like he has just stuck a Swiss Army knife in her eye. Last night I was making tea and let my children sniff the Red Zinger tea bag before I dumped it into my cup. Ellie smelled it and then Daniel took a whiff and promptly dropped it into his glazed chicken and rice. "IDIOT" screamed Ellie at an ear-shattering decibel. Last time I checked, I didn't raise my kids to call each other "Idiots" but for some reason it has become her word of choice. "Don't you use that word" I warned her, to which she replied (screamed bloody murder), "I didn't do anything." When I sent her to her room for a half hour, she said I was a "Meany", so it became an hour. She then made a guttural whining sound not unlike the speech-impaired character "Nell" played so freakishly by Jodie Foster in the nineties. An hour became an hour and a half and then 2 hours. The "Nell" sounds continued behind closed doors for approximately 45 minutes with random torturous screams thrown about intermittently. When she came downstairs at 8:00 I half expected to see green flesh and muscles ripping through her tee shirt.
Now, how such a sweet natured 10 year old blond who loves animals can get all Hulkamania over a dropped teabag is beyond me. Her teachers (thankfully) don't see this behaviour at school and she is nothing but cordial to her friends and other adults. Perhaps it's Daniel's carefree mellowness that throws her into a tizzy. I'll probably never now. But god help me, in three years she will be a teenager.
VAL
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