Sibling Love!

I am the third oldest of 7 children. I was lucky enough to be considered one of "the big kids." When I was younger we lived in AZ, close to "our Cousins." I put "cousins" in quotes because they were "ours", they were all siblings from the same family and they were the same sex(male/female) and same age as each of us in our family (all but my youngest sister had a "cousin" in that same family, my Aunt stopped after six) and I had my "own" cousin my age. It was fun growing up with them and we have some good memories with them.

Like I said I was lucky enough to be considered one of the "big kids". Why is it that we felt the need to separate the big kids from the little? Well I'll tell you why, because we felt we had power, power to what? Torture, tease, and ultimately rule over the "little kids" telling them what they could and could not do with or with out us, and we had every right, we were, in fact, "the big kids"! I look back at things we did to "the little kids" and think how silly it was that we enjoyed torturing them so much. I'm pretty sure I was never the one to come up with the clever things we would tell the younger ones or do to them but I was always joining in, I guess I was a follower. When we moved up North away from "our cousins" my two older sisters and I remained "The Big Kids" and still felt the right to torture, tease and boss our youngest siblings around.

I distinctly remember me and my sister thinking of things to tell our little sisters, things that weren't true, but knowing we could convince them otherwise. We one time told them if we removed this board (which was just some loose scrape wood my dad had) in our unfinished basement that our whole house would fall to the ground with them in it. We then continued to give them commands telling them if they didn't do the things we said we would pull on this board and the house would fall on us. First of all, why would we pull the board and let the house fall on us the "big kids" too? Like we wanted to be crushed along with our sisters?! I don't think so! but they didn't think of that at first. I remember them doing things for us and then catching on quickly, we hated it when they finally caught on to our schemes. But the best part of that fun memory was that I remember them running out in to the back yard when we finally said we pulled the board down and watching my two little sisters drag the youngest sister still in her high chair out the back door, aahhh good times!

My point in bringing this up is that as an adult I came to realize this is how it always works in big families, well big or small families, I'm sure this is just the way it works. My Hubby's older brother always has stories about how he would torture C and his little brother. I love to hear them because I remember doing similar things to my younger siblings and it's just funny that my hubby was one of the "little kids" growing up while I was on the other end of the spectrum. The reason this is on my mind the last few days is because it has begun in my little family already and I only have two kids! Why oh why did I think this trend would end with my children, it won't end ever, it is a tradition that will be passed down, or learned I guess, by every generation. Am I right? How was it in your families? I could be wrong maybe we were just bad sisters to our younger siblings and maybe other siblings do get along but it seems more often than not, they have similar stories like mine.

E loves to torture J and he has dealt with it pretty good until recently. He has finally started to fight back and it's funny to watch. E is so funny because I can tell when she's thinking "Hmm what can I do to annoy/torture my little brother? maybe close him in a dark closet that he can't get out of by himself and leave him there until mommy asks where he is, yeah that sounds good." She really did that, several times actually. One time was the laundry room but it's as dark and small as some closets. But it doesn't stop there, I hear her barking commands at him telling him to pick up her toys because she's too tired, then telling him to go in the other room and get some thing for her. It just makes me laugh because she is only 4 and it has already started. I can't wait to add more children to this little mix and see what happens with more than just two, it'll be like a torture circus. I now feel sorry for my mom and dad putting up with us kids fighting all the time. I guess now it's pay back time!

This is me and my sister just younger than me when we were little, it's my favorite picture of us when we were kids, look how cute we are! Does E look like me?

This is me holding my next youngest sister. I think I was four years old in this picture. I have loved babies since I was just a little girl.

This picture is kind of creepy because they look like a couple but they're not, they are siblings. That's my little brother(I couldn't find a baby picture of him) and my little sister, not fair that they got all the "brown" genes!

On the left, the baby of the Fam who didn't get tortured by us older three siblings, but mostly by her older brother and she tortured him quite a bit! On the right is the sister I was holding as a baby in the picture above.