Sibling Rivalry

Dog and baby. Baby and dog. Something tells me that soon, Lola will be trying to get up on her hind feet and cruise around the furniture.

It's truly a love/ hate thing with these two. If Gianna cries, Lola looks concerned and acts as though she may have to teach me a thing or two about parenting. If Lola barks, Gianna points at her and yells commands.



The one true battle remains the spot at the bottom of the stairs, in the living room. Lola and Gianna love this spot. Gianna loves it because she can thump her hands on the second stair up from the bottom, and pretend that she's giving her triumphant "I've taken over the world" speech. She also loves it because she likes to climb now. Lola loves that spot probably because Gianna loves it. Also, if she snuggles right up to the bottom stair, she is difficult to see, and I fairly regularly trip on her. She thinks she will be the Alpha Female if I perish.

Typically, Lola will walk to the bottom of the stairs and lay down, while staring at me. She knows exactly what she's doing. Gianna will immediately drop whatever she's doing, and crawl right up to her, and place both hands on the dog, commencing CPR. Lola retaliates by licking Gianna in the ear. Gianna will then, using a corn shucking motion, attempt to cleave Lola's tail in twain. Lola rolls over at this point, in a typical submissive dog stance, but this twists Lola's tail out of Gianna's hands, and all the wagging makes her crawl backwards to get out of the way.

The baby wins, of course. She just smells so irresistibly like bananas and Cheerios and all sorts of other lovely things that are thrown imperiously from the high chair. Lola creeps off to the kitchen to sniff around on the floor, in the hopes that she missed some tossed food the last time she checked, and Gianna crows in victory.