The Blues Clues Miracle

If there were an award for Most Bickering Siblings, my boys would be declared winners by a large margin. They have been at each other constantly lately, today even more than usual. Israel and Lebanon are playing much more nicely together than Tristan and Simon these days. They bicker, they taunt each other, they tattle, they whine. They won't make it to Labour Day at this rate.

That's why I was even more dumbfounded by Tristan this afternoon. He was at a birthday party for one of his friends at a local place called Cosmic Adventures. Tucked away in one corner they have a bunch of arcade-style games and you win tickets by playing, then parlay those tickets into useless crap that wouldn't even make the cut at the dollar store - Dora stickers and farm animals and other plastic bling.

Tristan perused the glass display case for a long time, pondering how to best spend his bounty of tickets. Finally, he selected a small Blues Clues figurine. I was a little surprised, because he grew out of Blues Clues more than a year ago ("that's baby stuff," he says with the derision of a teenager while Simon watches it with rapt attention), and the figurine would expend all of his hard-earned tickets. I checked with him more than once, to make sure he really wanted it.

"Simon will love this," he confided as he admired his acquisition. "I thought of him as soon as I saw it and I knew he would love it." Sure enough, as soon as we got home, he gave it to Simon.

And then he proceeded to chase him all around the house, trying to take it away from him. He'd wait for Simon to put it down and snatch it away with a gleeful, "Simon, I've got your Blues Clues, and you can't get it!"

Brothers.