Cage Match

In our house, there is a place we affectionately call "The Cage".
Now, now. It isn't as bad as it sounds. To effectively segregate the youngest child from our old dog, we put up a gate that spans the entire width of our family room, thereby giving the room a cage-like effect. The kids play in there a lot, sometimes with a parent and sometimes not. Like when I'm trying to make lunch or something. The two little suburban angels are in there all alone (but not out of my sight), left to their own devices.
And that's when Cage Match '07 is likely to break out.
I know they are just kids being kids, typical ol' brother-and-sister stuff, blah, blah, blah.
But. It. Was. Driving. Me. Crazy. (See previous post on vacuuming for one way I tried to cope!)
Here is where it is confession time for me.
You see, when we were waiting for Quinn to be born, I read What to Expect When You're Expecting, Your Pregnancy: Week by Week, etc. After he was born, I was diligently perusing What to Expect the First Year (at least for the first 7 months or so). We started getting Parents magazine.
Then, as we prepared for Keira, I read all sorts of stuff about adoption, international adoption, attachment and bonding. I also read books about China and I took some Mandarin classes. We subscribed to Adoptive Families Magazine. We even got books to prepare Quinn for a new sibling.
All this, yet I had never read anything about parenting siblings. And that was rapidly becoming more and more apparent to me.
And then, a friend mentioned this book to me: Siblings Without Rivalry. Good stuff, she said. Very helpful for them (they have 2 kids, about the age of our 2). A few days later, I read this review of it on Rumor Queen. (Here's another confession: I still read RQ...but only b/c we have friends still waiting. Really!)

So, thanks to the old internet, I had a copy of this baby on my doorstep in about a week. Without even dragging the kids to Borders!
I'm still working through the book, bit by bit, but it has helped already.

Of course, it's not all peaches and cream here all the time, but it is getting lots better. Quinn still issues a warning when people first meet Keira ("That's my sister, Keira - she hits and scratches!"), although I'm hoping it'll go back to the enthusiastic greeting he once gave, those many months ago ("That's my sister, Keira - she's from China!").

Only time will tell.

And if not, well, I always have a fall-back plan.

No one's been irreparably harmed by repeatedly being told "Go to you room!", right??