Teeth, claws and shrieks.

Little girls, my little girls anyway, are all teeth, claws and shrieks. Thankfully they are also soft, sweet and snuggly, or I would be an absolute wreck; bicker, bicker, hit, scratch, bite, scream, repeat. More than once I've walked into Sonja's room to find them in a greco-roman-style grapple, their limbs so tightly entangled that I'm not sure where to start peeling them apart.


I've so often repeated my speech about teaching Haven by example ("if you bite, she learns to bite"; "if you share, she learns to share") that I can almost see Sonja's eyes glaze over as soon as I begin; it's right up there with "cleaning up is important" and "you need to finish your breakfast so you have lots of energy for the day".


The fact is that Haven is the instigator of many of the spats and she even shrieks and makes a huge fuss when absolutely nothing has happened; the potential for a grievance is enough. A year old and a master manipulator. She gets pretty pissed off when I call her on it, but when Sonja has a huge red welt on her face and Haven is the one doing all the screaming, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on. 


Sometimes I wonder if telling them to "play nice" will ever morph into "fight nice"...