MyThreeDaughters

Every night before bed I read books to the two bigs. Each gets to pick one book. Every night, of late, Fontaine has chosen a tome of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories. Each chapter is long, and written with some pretty high-end dialogue and language for a six-year-old.
Elizabeth’s four, and she can’t stand this book.
But last night, Elizabeth gets her jammies on first, then chooses her book: A.A. Milne.
“I’m going to pick this,” Elizabeth says, “so Fontaine can’t pick it.”
Interesting move, I thought.
Now you can find much psychological jive on the internet about sibling rivalry. And in fact, you can find much jive about almost anything on the internet. I love a news story that validates itself by saying, “A quick search of such and such produces x-thousands hits on Google.” Guess what? A quick search of, say, purple monkeys produces 674,000 results, so maybe someone should write a news story about purple monkeys.
Bottom line is: the number one cause of sibling rivalry is having a sibling.
So Fontaine comes out and sees what book her younger sister has chosen.
“She can’t pick that. I was going to pick that book.”
I explain, for the fifth time during these evenings, that if sister picks your book, and you then pick a book, that’s like getting to pick two books.
Elizabeth then says: “O.K., you can have this book.”
At that point, Fontaine’s not going to pick the Milne book, because she’s decided she’s not going to pick a book Elizabeth wants, thereby allowing Elizabeth two books.
Fontaine picks a different book.
Then, in a pirouette that I didn’t see developing, Elizabeth walks over and chooses yet a third book.
We sit on the bed to read.
And I realize what’s happened.
We’re not reading Milne.
Elizabeth wins.
The book she can’t stand has been shelved for the night.