It's mostly because I felt bad for Teyla. She's four years younger than Connor, and six years younger than Natalie. I didn't want her to be the dangling modifier of our family sentence, the leftover child who didn't have a built-in friend.
I felt bad that she wouldn't have a sibling close in age. I felt bad that she wouldn't be able to play games with the older kids or keep up with their antics or be invested in their day-to-day lives.
Turns out, I needn't have worried.
Maybe it's because she's Teyla, able to leap 20 developmental milestones in a single bound, but this two-year-old fully believes she's five. She not only keeps up with her older siblings, she often leads the pack.
She adores attention from Natalie, especially when Natalie reads to her. And she and Connor are identical twins separated by four years. They run around like wild banshees and go on safaris and shoot the bad guys and jump off the couch and irritate the heck out of each other.
(Often, when Teyla falls down, she'll shriek out, "No! No-no Connor!" Even though Connor is at school. Because clearly, he was involved if she's upset or in pain.)
Watching my kids learn to be sibling-friends makes those hard moments of parenting so worth it.
Oh so worth it.
(And for the record, I'm OK with being wrong about Teyla "needing" a sibling close in age. Because adding one more child to the mix only grows the friendship potential exponentially.)
