Five and Three

Five and three is a different thing than two and four.

I keep coming back to that. The shift snuck up on us. One season the girls were toddler-and-baby, then little-and-littler, and now suddenly we have a five-year-old with full creative direction and a three-year-old who is ready, physically, to follow her anywhere.

I wrote about the girls playing together about a year ago, and I went back to read it before writing this one. A lot of what I said then still holds. But the dynamic at five-and-three is a different chapter than what we had at four-and-two, so I wanted to come back to it.

Nora at five is imaginative, increasingly independent, and has very specific opinions about how a game should go. She is the choreographer. She decides what we're playing, who is which character, where the story goes next. Maeve at three is finally big enough and coordinated enough to actually keep up. The trouble is that her body got there before her ego did. She can run the obstacle course, but she isn't always ready to let her sister be the director.

So you get this funny tension. Nora wants to lead. Maeve wants to play. Maeve also, apparently, only wants a toy at the exact moment Nora picks it up. We've all seen that one before.

What I've noticed lately is that Nora knows. She knows her little sister looks up to her, wants to be near her, wants to be invited into whatever the game is. And every now and then she leans into that a little. A small power trip from the older sister, very normal, very human. I'm not mad about it. I'm an older brother. I get how the math works from her side of the equation.

The other side of the math is that Maeve is big for her age, and is genuinely strong enough to physically overpower her older sister when she's had enough. Nora is the sweeter of the two by nature, and I have honestly never seen her try to hit Maeve. Maeve, on the other hand, when she gets pushed past her limit, will absolutely take her sister out. And here is the strange and oddly reassuring part: she has only ever done that to Nora. Never another kid. Never a friend at the park. Just her sister.

I think that's because, even though they're closer in size than people expect, Maeve still sees Nora as her big sister. There's a hierarchy in her head that her body could ignore but doesn't. The permission to fully lose it is a permission she only gives herself with the one person she trusts to still be there afterward. Which, when I sit with it, is kind of beautiful. Painful in the moment. Beautiful in the wide shot.

Most of the time it works itself out. They are each other's built-in playmate, and they know it. Jo and I have been trying to lean into that more. Sometimes we have to nudge a little harder than we used to. Hey. You two. You have each other. Go on an adventure. Mommy and I are right here with our iced coffees and our croissants. The magical combination is still finding another kid at the park, of course. But in lieu of that, we want them to know: this is your person.

The newest development, and the one that has me a little misty if I'm honest, is that Nora has decided she is Maeve's best friend. She's been telling her this. Repeatedly. And, very Nora, she is insistent about it. She says it like a fact. I am your best friend. The reverse claim is not on the table, mind you. She's older. She's in kindergarten. The hierarchy holds.

I don't know what version of this they'll have at seven and five, or ten and eight, or any of the ages I can't quite picture yet. The dynamic will shift again. They always do.

But right now, in this stretch, I want to remember it like this. Five-year-old choreographer. Three-year-old who could end her, choosing not to. An older sister who has decided, with full kindergarten authority, that she is the best friend. Two sisters who, when we leave them alone with a stick and a patch of grass, will almost always work it out themselves.