Sibling Fights

I naively thought that since Cade and Camryn are 9 years apart we wouldn't have too many fights....or if they did fight it would be when they were a little older.  Wrong.  They fight now.  They love each other a lot, but they also love to irritate each other a lot.  And it definitely goes both ways.  Cade loves to make Camryn scream.  Usually putting his hand on her carseat while we are driving gets the job done.  He also likes to sit on her Home Depot riding toy.  She squeals and we tell him to get off of it.  He usually does after mumbling something about how it was his toy to begin with.  Camryn likes to hit Cade, either with her hands or whatever object she is holding.  That makes Cade squeal.

The age difference between the two makes dealing with this pretty complicated.  The logical thing is to tell Cade to grow up because he is 10.  But if we give Camryn her way all of the time because she is younger then we are just creating a monster. 

Sunday night Jay wanted to watch that 2016 movie.  I just wanted to go to bed.  I told him he could have the family room TV if he would put Camryn to bed so I could go to bed.  He agreed.  Between you and me I actually turned the lights off and played Angry Birds.  If anyone had walked in I was prepared to hide my phone in the covers and pretend I was asleep.  Anyway, while I was in our room I heard WWIII erupt in the living room.

It started out pretty typically.  Cade wanted to lay on the floor to watch the movie with Jay.  He's always been a kid who likes to lay on the floor.  But if Camryn sees a body on the floor she assumes she can wrestle it to the death.  Cade was not in the mood to wrestle.  Jay told him he was going to have to get up, but Cade didn't want to be on the couch he wanted to be on the floor.  And I can see his point...he just wants to lay on his floor and be left alone, even though he knows she doesn't understand it still frustrates him.  I'm not sure if Cade got up or not but Camryn was not going to be ignored.  She chucked her lotion bottle at Cade's head.  The top of it happened to be open and it scraped his forehead.  Cade screamed and then I heard Camryn scream.  Then Jay tells Cade that he has to remember Camryn is smaller than him and then Cade says "it is bleeding" and "you need to spank her or something."  Jay is trying to console both crying kids.  What do I do??  Keep advancing my levels on Angry Birds. 

By the next morning Cade did have a pretty good skinned place on his forehead.  Thankfully he seemed to have forgiven Camryn and she had forgotten about him grabbing her arm.  Jay tried to explain to Cade about how it is different for a 1 year old and a 10 year old but I don't know if he understands it.  And from his point of view I can see where it is confusing...and I always worry he will think we love Camryn more because she takes so much of our time.  But them I see them together like they were last night and I think things will be ok...

Camryn likes to boss Cade and Cade seems to like it.