Lately Evie and Ollie have been fighting like cats and dogs. At times, it is difficult to leave them in a room together. Evie certainly has her share of the blame, but I would say the big difference seems to be Oliver.

It’s like he suddenly woke up and realized he wanted his say. He has very strong opinions on things. Everything in the house is arranged JUST THE WAY HE WANTS IT! Don’t you dare touch anything or move it or hand him the wrong thing or try to take something away. It doesn’t matter that it was on the floor and he hadn’t even looked at it twice in the past week. If you touch it (or especially if Evie touches it), there’s going to be a meltdown.

Understandably, this is sort of hard for Evie to take. First off, she’s used to doing whatever she wants, whether Oliver likes it or not. Second off, she’s often an innocent bystander, maybe picking up some abandoned crayons only to be suddenly attacked by a furious maniac. She often gets the short end of the stick when we have to take something of hers and put it away because she simply cannot play with it without Oliver being physically restrained.

Then it occurred to me: the terrible twos! Oliver is just about to turn two, and that’s how a two year old is supposed to act.

Honestly, it really hasn’t been that bad. Looking back, it seemed a lot worse when Evie was doing it. I guess it’s a lot easier to deal with now because 1) we’ve been through it before, so we’re more prepared, 2) we know it doesn’t last long, and 3) having two kids means we’re busier now than we were back then. And having an older kid helps out too, both from the fact that they do *sometimes* get along and play, and the fact that he can watch her and learn how to behave a little bit.

Still, when you combine his new attitude with the fact that he’s getting molars and waking up many, many times at night, this whole parenting thing definitely got turned up a notch.