The Love of Three Brothers

So we've had an interesting little situation in our family. Thobe is very affectionate to everyone. He loves to give hugs and kisses to everyone in our family. If he feels love in his little heart, he wants to hug and kiss what he loves. Hyrum is equally affectionate and eagerly hugs and kisses Thobe and me and Michael and Alden. Alden, however, has decided that it's gross to kiss his brother Thobe. Whenever Thobe says, "Alden, I love you" (which is a regular occurrence around here), Alden makes a shriveling sound and falls to the ground. When Thobe kisses Alden, Alden grabs where Thobe kisses him and throws the kiss back to Thobe and tells him he doesn't want his kisses. This of course makes Thobe very sad, and he says, "I don't want my kisses back. I want you to have them." This interchange makes me feel sad, and I remind Alden, as my mom reminded me when I was mean to my sisters (which is something I swore I'd never do to my kids by the way), how lucky he is to have a brother and how we should always show love to our brother. Alden, while rolling his eyes, then sort of tolerates a hug from Thobe.

It may be no surprise that from this type of reaction that Thobe gets from his older brother that Thobe has been especially into telling us all the things that he hates. "I hate peanut butter sandwiches," he told me the other day, which surprised me because the day before that was what he requested for lunch. I've heard a lot of things that he hates lately; actually, I think it's his way of adamantly telling me that he doesn't want to do something. Nonetheless, redemption was made with Alden yesterday, although he broke a house rule to do it. Hopefully both boys learned their lesson.

Alden: Thobe, we are now training to be Jedis, and I will be your teacher.

Thobe: I don't want to train. I just want to fight.

Alden: No, you can't fight because you haven't trained to be a Jedi yet.

Thobe: I don't want to train.

Alden: Thobe if you don't do what I want to do, I won't play with you.

Thobe: I love my mommy. I hate Alden.

Alden's reaction surprised me. He started crying, clearly showing that his feelings had been hurt. I told Thobe that we never, ever tell someone in our family that we hate them and reminded Alden how important it is to show love to each other and to make our everyone in our family feel loved. Hopefully it worked. Despite this hateful story, our boys really do get along well with each other. Thobe didn't want to go to preschool the other day because he wanted to play with his brother Hyrum. From the moment Alden gets home, Alden and Thobe are inseparable. They love playing superheros together (in the picture Alden's dressed up like Clark Kent), transformers, Star Wars, and whatever other imaginative thing they can come up with. I'm so happy that they get along with each other and play so well together. I hope that they can always be this good of friends. I really love my boys.