Numba Two.

When I was a kid, my grandmother had a videocamera. We are talking one of those huge, break your shoulder, records straight to a VHS cassette, videocameras. One time all of us cousins were at her house for some holiday or another, and we decided we wanted to make a movie. She was recording as she told us all “Okay, you can use it, but you have to know what you’re going to do before you are allowed to turn it on.” Little me looked right into the camera and said, “I know what we’re gonna do.”

The next segment on that tape is pretty much just footage of extreme zooms into both the toilet bowl and the cat’s litter box, set to a soundtrack of giggling.

And why did everyone go along with my completely asinine plan? Because I am a big sister. I’m the biggest sister, actually (even if 8 of my 11 “little” siblings are now taller than me, and the other three are only still shorter because they’re still in elementary school).

Let me tell you some of the things we biggest sisters do.*

1. We always have awesome ideas.
2. We make everyone do our awesome ideas with us.
3. We are loud.
4. We like everyone to pay attention to us all the time.

*this is a broad generalization based upon behaviors exhibited by myself and my eldest daughter, so, you know, your mileage may vary when it comes to your own biggest sister.

So as you can imagine, it’s pretty much The Fiona Show at our house all day every day. There is lots of running around and jumping on and off of things, and things played with and then thrown all over everywhere in an awesomely fun and boisterous way. There are ninjas and pirates, monsters and bad guys. She directs the play, and it is some super fun play.

But now that the biggest sister in our household is at school all day, it’s been very interesting to see her underlings come out of the shadows. Violet is now running the show during the school day, and it’s a whole new world. A world of elaborately set up tea parties with lots of stuffies in attendance, games that are played for hours instead of seconds, of sitting quietly and reading books, and of course the wearing of leotards and tutus and princess crowns.

And Bianca? Well, she’s baby sister. She goes where the wind blows. She’s wild with Fiona, listens to stories with Violet. I’ll be very interested to see what happens when Violet leaves and it’s Bianca’s turn to be the big cheese.

 

And I also will say- it’s really strange to me to be watching from the outside what appears to be essentially an exact replica of the relationship between myself and my next younger sister. It’s so weird.

Because seriously. Look at our faces. One of us said “Let’s have a footfight!” and the other said “…okayyyyy” (but probably not before saying “Mandy, no! We’re gonna get in trouble!”)