Poor Siena, she tries so hard to be a good mom to Thalia sometimes, and Thalia wants nothing to do with it.

We’ve asked the girls not to come into our room at 5 in the morning. Siena will try to physically restrain Thalia or keep their bedroom door closed as Thalia tries to open it if it’s early, and the end result is quite the opposite of what we were aiming for, namely an amount of sleep that reasonable, sane people might assume they should be able to get with kids these ages. Instead, we get Thalia screeching at the top of her lungs as Siena tells her she can’t leave their room.

Or, Siena will pick out two sets of clothes for Thalia to wear in the morning, and Thalia will hate both of them, and then both girls will get upset: Thalia because she doesn’t like her options, and Siena because she’s only trying to help and she can’t stand it when her sister is upset.

We are now telling Siena to just try to worry about herself, and let us be the parents. “Some kind of help / is the kind of help…”