(no subject)

I wonder if Mari and Zoe will have any birth order characteristics and if so, I wonder which ones. Usually, I just think they won't look much like any of them because they will have characteristics of both oldest child and later children. Luci very much has some characteristics of a third/youngest child. But the other girls, I just can't see it. Zoe is technically a first child, but she is now the middle child. She was, however, only an only child for 13 mos, so she didn't have a lot of time to know she was the oldest. And now she has an older sister getting to do things she isn't because her sister is older. Mari on the other hand came into the family as the third child, but she is the oldest. She started out imitating Zoe right from the start, very much as a younger sister would, only worse. But we have made much over the fact that she is oldest and can do some things her sisters can't yet (though not by much of a margin, Zoe usually catches up literally within weeks or months, they are after all only 10 1/2 months apart). It has always been very obvious that Mari needed more concious confidence building to be her own person. She probably always will, but preschool seems to be doing its work of giving her a sense of herself and helping her find her voice.

I'm rambling on about this because of a discussion I had with someone about first children. We were discussing the intense fantasy worlds and ability to play alone that first children often exhibit. I am a first child and so is Brad and we both had this characteristic. It seems to be a really common one, not that non-first children don't ever have it, but it definitely fits with the first child picture. Zoe has those characteristics. Mari on the other had spent her first two years as one of lots and lots of same age siblings and simply doesn't play alone very well and seems to really need others to complete her fantasy worlds. It isn't that she *can't* play alone. She does it on occasion, when forced to it, like when both her sisters fall asleep at the same time (doesn't happen often). There have been nights when we have let each of the girls stay up late to have some one on one time with me and especially to be with daddy. On Mari's nights I've often come downstairs with Brad after having tucked the other girls in, to find her building a city with her blocks and using dollhouse dolls and small animals to play in it all alone. So she *can* do it, but she doesn't choose to most of the time. Zoe will choose to do it and get very upset if she is invaded by others. This could just be a personality trait involved with introversion/extroversion, and probably is. I just think the whole birth order thing is fascinating and it is obvious with Mari and Zoe that the birth order thing is very confused.

I woke up with headache, but I did get to sleep hard and long last night. Brad was in bed with Luci last night in her room when I went up to bed, something he has not done voluntarily in a long time. At some point in the night he came back to our room, but I never heard him and I never heard Luci. I am very grateful for that as its been about a week since that happened. We had almost two good weeks of sleep before Luci started the night time wakings again and I had lost a lot of sleep in five days and was feeling it. I didn't say anything to Brad, but perhaps he was trying to help because he's worked so late all this week. He didn't get home until after 8pm last night, poor guy. He has to be sooooo tired too.