They really do love each other...

I just have to be patient and wait for the little signs of proof that they do. Earlier this week, I was cooking dinner and both boys were in the kitchen with me, which had me feeling a bit stressed. Miles was once again using a step stool to try and reach what he's not supposed to reach. Elijah walked over to Miles and I was expecting it to get ugly with the usual "leave me lone, jijah!" Instead, Miles said, "hug, jijah?" and Elijah gave him a hug. Miles then said, "I lu you, jijah." Elijah said he loved him, too. It was so, so sweet. The kind of moment that makes all the "leave me lone" and "Miles is bothering me" type statements (or screams) fade a bit. This morning as I was running around getting ready, I heard Ella cry from a different room. I then heard Miles say, "I wanna hode you." I walked into the room to find him trying to pick her up and by this point she was smiling. He found that he couldn't pick her up so instead he put his hands on her tummy and said, "tickle kickle kickle." I was reminded of an excerpt from The Girlfriends' Guide to Motherhood that I had copied when Elijah was tiny and put in his baby book...

Some of us are just blessed with the ability to get kids ready to go out and have them dressed in clean clothes with combed hair...others of us straggle in and out of places with howling children in mismatched outfits with faces that look permanently stained with popsicle. Neither style is any indication of how good a mother you are, so just do what you can. Being a mother is hard and endless work, and you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And just when you think you can't take another step, out of the corner of your eye you will see the older child hug his new baby like he really means it, and you will weep and hear angels sing.