A Heap of Difference.

Well, we all know I love my girls.  And, I love thinking about them.  How they're similar, and just as often, how they're different.  And they really are different.  Here's a bit of an explication.

Eleanor is very confident.  The more people in a room, the more social she becomes.

Josephine's confidence waxes and wanes with changing situations.  If there are more than five people around, she whimpers and sticks out her bottom lip.  She won't stand to be put down.

But...as soon as she becomes a wee bit acclimated, she is completely and totally bananas.  Eleanor, on the other hand, stays at about the same degree of social openness the entire time.

Eleanor, since she began to sit up at six months, was happy organizing refrigerator magnets, reading quietly for hours, dancing in one room, playing one instrument, etc.

Josephine is all over the house, doing every single thing she comes in contact with halfway to completion until she's too tired to take it anymore.

Speaking of tired:  Eleanor is a heavy sleeper, like sleeps through dinner at a restaurant, but needs relatively little sleep.  She dropped naps around her second birthday and has never gone back.  (I gave up fighting eight months later.)  Josephine, on the other hand, is an extraordinarily light sleeper, but enjoys a drowsy little cat nap whenever she can get it.

A good empirical illustration:

Setting:  My diaper bag is on the floor.  Full of junk.  Zipped up. 

Eleanor approaches the bag.  She gently tugs the zipper.  It does not give way.  She tries again.   No luck.  She totally freaks out because she can't do it herself.  I offer to help.  We get it unzipped.  She then methodically removes each item, naming it, asking questions about it, turning it around in her hands, and adding it to a pile on the floor.  She then carries on an imaginary conversation with the items before putting them away.

Josephine approaches the bag.  She doesn't even look if the bag is zipped.  She just starts pulling.  Then, she notices the zipper, and tried to get it open with brute force.  No luck.  She gives up and moves on.  I refocus her by opening the bag.  She then flings all the items over one shoulder, and they land wherever they may.  She then wears the bag as a hat, and knee walks jauntily around the house laughing. Thirty-five seconds later, she discards the bag.

They're just so cute and funny. 

Another big difference.  Eleanor runs on pure adrenaline. She doesn't use food for fuel.  I mean, she eats.  She snacks through the day.  But, her whole day consists of less eating than one of Jo's meals.  So, that means, Jo loves to eat.  For hours.  This morning, I made them each an egg, split a yogurt between them, and gave them each 3/4 of a banana muffin.  Here were the plates after breakfast.

Obviously, the above is Eleanor.  In her words though, she is "not a breakfast person."  At this point, she was already completely naked, with the exception of jewels and high heels, and dancing to Beyonce.

And, of course, this is Jo.  And, she then proceeded to eat the rest of Eleanor's breakfast with the same degree of voracity.  Eating and climbing are the only times she's focused.  :o)

As another note, a great thing about Jo's eating is that it has made me relax about the girls' eating in general.  I can see that they eat when they're hungry and, just like adults, all kids are different.  Eleanor just prefers to get a quick bite and get to dancing.  Jo loves to mange*.  What can you do.

*I looked this up, because I realized I've never spelled it.  This looks like the skin disease.  But, in Romance languages, "mange" relates to food and eating.  Is that where this came from?  I looked it up, but found no definite answer.  Deep Google?