Sitting down to write this got me thinking about how long I’ve been doing these siblings project posts for.
So I’ve spent the last 15 minutes looking back through my archives to see when I started. Turns out that I’ve somehow managed to stick with this since January 2017. I’m quite proud to be honest, that I’ve been taking photos of my children together every month for the last 4 years, capturing the little details of their relationship as they grow up together.
What’s really tickled me though, is how little has really changed over those 4 years.
There are parts of the second siblings post I wrote, back in February 2017, that I could well have written yesterday. They’re still good friends, and still enjoy playing together and spending time together – up to a point, when they then need to just back off a bit and have some time by themselves.
They’re spending a lot more time together at the moment than they normally would, with the school being closed and not really being able to go anywhere or do anything. I think they’re quite enjoying being that bit more involved in what the other is doing for school work each day, offering advice and suggestions that are sometimes welcomed and other times not particularly appreciated!
And when the school work is done for the day they’re happy to stay together; to play Roblox together, to head out with me for a walk in the park, or just to rush outside to scoot together in our carpark. On days when we all need to get out of the house, to burn off some energy, but don’t want to actually have to go anywhere these scoots are the perfect compromise.
And they give me a chance to take some photos of the children together in nice, natural daylight.
I think Rhys and Nerys have both naturally started to lean on each other more over the last year, as they’ve been able to see their friends less and less with school closures and social distancing in place.
They’re so lucky to have each other through all this, to have someone to talk to and to play with. And when they do fall out, which they generally do at one point or another each day, it doesn’t take too long and too much space from each other before they’re back to being friends again.
I’m not sure how much of this time they’ll remember when they’re older, but I hope they remember that they were together through it, that they sat side by side with printed worksheets from school during the first lockdown. How much fun they had last summer working their way through our bucket list together. The way they listened in on each other’s live lessons with school during this latest lockdown. How they did it all together.