If I haven’t made it abundantly clear here before, let me do so now- my kids have very different personalities.  Scorch is my sensitive guy- he tells you how he’s feeling and wants to so very much to please you.  The Bean? Not so much- she’s basically a mystery to me.

She’s got two new tricks are making life interesting.  The first is telling us that she doesn’t love us any more.  I have no idea where she picked up on that- if anything the Hubs and I go overboard by always telling the kids that we love them. But somehow that little stinker has realized that if she tells poor Scorch she doesn’t love him any more, she has the power to send him into a complete tizzy. He gets upset and so confused over this- why doesn’t she love him? What can he do to make her love him? The whole thing makes him nuts.

Her second way to get under his skin essentially involves treating Scorch like he’s escaped from the asylum. Last week the kids and I were in the bathroom getting cleaned up. Scorch was exhausted- he was up uber-late the night before and it was nap time, so he was just in complete meltdown mode.  I put him in timeout because he was being rude, so he crumbled on floor, carrying on. Beaner went right up to him, crouched down to his level, started stroking his shoulder and talking to him like one would a crazy person. “It’s OK, Scorch- just calm down. It’ll be OK.” all in this soothing voice.   I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel he was so mad at her for treating him like that. I had to walk away because I was laughing so hard, all the while yelling at the Bean to leave the poor kid alone.  Well, once she saw that this tact got an even bigger rise out of her big brother, that’s been her go-to method to get instant attention from him.

The scary part? She’s only 2. I can’t tell if I’m raising a psychological genius or a sociopath.