Beat boxing argument

Coen and Lucy are home with Tad this summer. And they are together. A lot.

Here they are in a finer moment of sibling togetherness:

But, as all parents know, lots of sibling togetherness can lead to sibling rivalry.  So there's been some fighting.  I'm hearing a lot of

"Don't!!!"

"Stop it!"

"I'm telling!"

from the next room.

This morning the argument was that Lucy was trying to gross Coen out while he was eating breakfast.  He gets put off his meal a lot by his sister who likes to mash together unlikely food combinations and dip things into things into which one normally would not dip.  Today, she was dipping her pancakes in her milk. These kinds of things can lead Coen to say, "I've lost my appetite!" and push his plate away.  And so often whatever his reaction is, leads Lucy into (loud) tears and suddenly Coen's getting reprimanded for something Lucy started.

He was so frustrated this morning, so I brought him into the kitchen with me.  He ate his breakfast on a stool and asked me to tell him stories of me and Auntie Bethie fighting.

This morning I remembered one and told him:

Auntie Bethie and me were talking onto a tape recorder and pretending to do commercials.  I decided we would do a beat boxing commercial. (This was the 80s you see, and I had to have a quick digression, explaining to Coen what beat boxing is and how it sounded).  Now, I at age 10 felt like I could beat box pretty well--not nearly as well as whats-his-name from the Police Academy or the Fat Boys, but I could at least make it sound right.  My sister, in my opinion, sounded like someone pretending to fart when she did it.  So back to the story, we were making a beat boxing commercial and I was saying something like "Come to OUR beat boxing school! Where you can learn to beat box like the best!" and then my sister piped in with "Now for the beat boxing TEACHER!!!" and started making her fart noises.  Well this launched us into a huge argument because I told her she couldn't be the teacher because she couldn't even beat box and she was like "Yes I CAN!" and I was like "No you CAN'T!" and then a large argument extended from there which likely ended in my pushing her and her yelling "MOM!!!" and me getting in trouble. 

Coen was all ears and by the end of my story, all smiles too.  I hope I left him with a sense that all older siblings get frustrated with their younger counterpart.  I left myself with amusement that I'd once had a fight with my sister about beat boxing in 1985.