Claire has a careful, meticulous personality that borders on being OCD. When she notices a speck of dirt anywhere, she will point it out to me. When there is a wet spot on the floor, she will wipe it up. And just recently, she has started to come to me with her teeny weeny hangnails, asking to have them clipped off.
Even when she plays, she is organizing and arranging just so. Her methods do not always make sense to us, but they do in her head and she tends to FREAK OUT if her format is disturbed.
An example of Claire’s OCD nature.
Aerin, by contrast, is a destroyer. We have nicknamed her “Mini-Godzilla” because she is all about wrecking, demolishing, and deconstructing. When she sees a stack of blocks, she will knock it over. When she comes across a LEGO creation, she will take it apart piece by piece. In fact, the first thing she does every morning is to make a beeline for the stacking cups and pull them out one by one.
You know that scene in Lilo & Stitch where Stitch destroys the reproduction of San Francisco? Yeah. She’s just like that. Except she doesn’t do any of the building portion. (Perhaps she will build, then destroy, when she gets older?)
So it’s plain to see that my daughters would frequently run into conflicts. Or in this case, Aerin regularly upsets Claire by ruining all her handiwork. And if I am not able to prevent Claire from throwing a tantrum, her hysterics will drive Aerin into tears as well.
…And this is one of the reasons I have not been blogging as much.
