I know that many of you parents can relate to sibling rivalry and all it entails. It seems to begin at a very early age. Once the youngest is semi-mobile all hell H-E-DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS (Hi Mom!) breaks loose and the fight is on. I've been fortunate that neither Chickie nor Meelie No have been seriously injured.

One of the things that really chaps my lips is that, here they are, sitting in front of me, playing nicely, and WHAMO! The Earth collides with Venus, Satan gets in on the act and somewhere amidst the dust and noise, they are fighting. I don't mean mortal hand to hand combat (we have been close to that mind you) but generally SCREAMING and YELLING and hitting, and pinching and scratching and OH.MY.LORD.I.NEED.AN.APPLE.MARTINI! Make mine a double please, extra sour.

When they were younger, it never failed that we would get in the car, and not even be on the freeway before they would be yelling: "Mom! She's touching me! Mom! She's touching my stuff! Mom! She's looking at me! Mom! Fill in the blank." A mother can only stand so much of this before she takes the classic Bill Cosby stance and yells loudly: "OK, NOBODY TOUCH EACH OTHER OR TOUCH EACH OTHER'S STUFF OR LOOK AT EACH OTHER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES!" Or of course, until you move out of the house, in which case you are no longer my responsibility, thank you very much please.

On our way home from Florida yesterday evening, I started laughing uncontrollably. I was suddenly hit by a memory that is so clear in my mind, it feels as if it happened yesterday. Chickie used to sit on Meelie's head (she was about 5 and Meelie was about 2 1/2 years old). Keep in mind, Meelie was going through the "I'm going to bite you if you don't do things my way" stage. Some of you parents can almost see where this is going, I'm sure. As I stated, Chickie used to sit on Meelie's head. This generally happened whenever Meelie wouldn't do what she wanted, was in the same room, took a toy that Chickie wanted to play with, or any other scenario you can think of. As I was headed in to pull Chickie, once again, off of Meelie's head, Chickie let out this blood curdling scream. She shot straight up off of the floor yelling "she BIT me! She bit me on my BUTT!" I still picture her dancing around, clutching her "cheeks" and chanting "OW! OW! SHE BIT ME ON THE BUTT!"

Does it make me a bad mom when I tell you that she deserved it? You sit on your sister's butt, you get bit. Were you surprised? I still think the funniest thing was when OWW walked through the room, took in the situation, shook his head and said to Chickie: "at least she didn't fart." Don't you love support I get?

Needless to say, as they have gotten older, the head sitting stopped. The tone of the arguments have shifted, but they are no less scary to get in the middle of. But more to the point, I now know why Meelie does what she does. She is brain damaged because her sister sat on her head when she was young. That explains a lot.

Now, if I can just get through the next few years I should be ok. We'll get them a college degree and living on their own, perhaps married. The only problem with that is when they are gone, we won't know what to do with ourselves.

Maybe I should just start sitting on my husband's head. What do you think?