Differences Between Children

I spent Friday outside replanting the garden area in my front yard.  Some of the plants were damaged due to a few freezes this past winter and it’s also needed mulch for at least the past year or so.  We just were not ready to put money into it and had not made the time to do it.  It looked pretty bad (to put it nicely!) and was definitely time to make it look beautiful again.

My parents came over to help with all the planting and to have extra sets of eyes on my two daughters since the road runs right in front of my house.  The girls had an absolute blast playing outside in the water from the hose and in all the dirt.  My oldest was kind enough to spray water into the dirt to create a small mud hole for my youngest daughter.  In the picture my little dirtball is actually wearing a light purple tank top and light green shorts with flowers.  Who knew?!  We did the signs for DIRTY (alot!), TREE, GRASS, FLOWER, WATER, and HOT.

I think I was the one who did the most learning during this project, noticing the differences in personalities between my two girls.  My youngest loves to get as wet and dirty as possible, whereas the oldest does not.  My youngest also held the worms and bugs we found, whereas my oldest was squeamish.  My youngest climbed on top of all the bags of mulch to get as high up as possible and laughed as she teetered precariously on the edge, whereas my oldest preferred to stay on the ground.  But my oldest always desires to help (even with washing dishes or watering the garden) and my youngest could care less.

Are your children like this?  Is the oldest child usually the helper and the youngest rebellious?  I wasn’t sure if this is pretty typical or if it’s just my kids.  I also wonder how this would change, if at all, if we had a third child.  Time to go so I can pry my youngest off the coffee table…