You take the good, you take the bad

It seems I am always hearing about how the second kid is never anything like the first. And I can agree, to a point, but it seems beyond the spitting image Eli is to Myka at the same age, our children have a lot in common. I won't go into all that I have noticed, but two things have jumped out at me this week that I feel are worth mentioning.
We have two screamers. Myka was shrieking at a very early age, not in protest or sadness, but in the sheer joy of hearing herself do it. It was cute at first, and I won't say we encouraged it. too much. but she was a baby and she wasn't crying so we didn't mind. And so we are STILL correcting this behavior today, at age three and a half. Again, it is usually out of excitement, but now that she is older (and knows that it bothers us) it can be used out of frustration or anger or tiredness or boredom or just because it's a Tuesday. I thought we might avoid it with Eli, until this week. Now he screams too. Although he is using it a little more out of frustration, he still just tries it out once in awhile to see if he can still do it. And he can. And then Myka answers his call with her best glass shattering cry. And then I go outside and stick my head in the 6 foot snowdrift by the driveway.
BUT, we also have two dancers. And this one Eli is working on ahead of when Myka displayed it for us. For the last few days while we all play in the living room, we take a toy that plays music and get it going while Eli is sitting up. To certain up-beat tunes, he will sit with a small object in his hand and just wiggle the rest of his body. I have tried to record it several times, but the camera always distracts him, and then there is that girl that keeps jumping in front of him to get a picture of herself, or her hand, or the balloon she is holding. So I shut off the camera, and she shrieks, and he shrieks, and I realize my kids really aren't so different from one another.