Yeah, right, I’d think to myself. There is NO way I’m going to be best friends with these jerks!

Well, as moms often are, she was right. The two I once dubbed as geeks, tattle-talers and stupid pains-in-the-neck as I sat, punished, in one of many corners pondering the best means for their mutual demise, are definitely my best friends. I’m grateful on an almost daily basis for them. Though as kids we fought Every. Single. Day. (sorry, Mom!), now we’re all confidantes, sources of support and lookouts. We’re fiercely defensive of each other, happy to lend a listening and sympathetic ear and we share just about everything. My sisters are two of the few people in the world I know I can trust with anything, including my life. I don’t know what I’d do without them and often feel sorry for other women who aren’t lucky enough to have a sister, let alone two.

It strikes me as beautifully sweet when I hear my twin daughters say, “I love you” to each other, as they often do before bed. Andie says to Rachel, “You’re the best sister in the world,” and they hug. Just as my mom reminded us of our future relationships with each other, I tell my daughters that they will always be best friends, even more so than they are now, and that looking out for each other is of the utmost importance. When Andie’s friends choose to be mean to or ignore Rachel, Andie needs to stand up for her sister.

After all, they will be there for each other for the rest of their lives. Grade school classmates most likely won’t. Little do they know just how deep a bond they are forging for the future.

Do you have sisters? Daughters? What is the best part of the sister relationship, in your opinion?

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A little background here: My mother had three daughters and no sons. My maternal grandmother had two daughters and no sons. My maternal great-grandmother had three girls, no boys. Even my paternal grandmother only had one boy and three girls. I knew my chances of having a boy were probably not very good since genetics do seem to determine some of this (i.e., a bad environment for the Y sperm).

This was why I was so anxious to know the gender of my babies. I wanted to have a boy first so I could be sure I’d get one. Growing up with girls, I’d always gotten along much better with boys, and I was dying to have a son of my own so I could see what life with boys in the house was like. I’ve also always admired the mother/son bonds I’ve seen and wanted to experience it for myself.

When I found out my babies were both girls some weeks later, I have to admit, I was deeply disappointed. After all, I was fulfilling the destiny I always knew I would — being a producer of only female offspring.

Of course that all changed once I saw them. I no longer cared that they were girls, even if they could be the only children I’d ever have. I fell in love with them, their little-girl clothes and shoes, their little-girl hair, and I loved how easy it was to relate to them.

I adore having daughters, which is quite unexpected and, frankly, awesome. Every stage brings with it new discoveries about them, different ways to relate and yet another facet to their ever-growing personalities. It’s fascinating to watch them grow up, make decisions, learn responsibility and become more and more independent.

We all know though that a girl’s open love and admiration for her mother abruptly end when she turns 12 or 13 and her mother becomes the stupidest and most embarrassing person on the planet. I mean, mother/daughter friction is just going to happen, right? It makes me sad to think about my daughters, who currently profess that I’m the best mom ever and still openly admire and love me, being constantly annoyed and smart-mouthed.

I’ll just hope that we can keep the momentum going and stay close throughout those tough years. If not, then I only have one good year left, two, if I’m lucky.

Whatever happens, I am eternally grateful that I have been blessed with my daughters.

Did you have a strong preference for your kids to be a certain gender? If so, why?

If you have or have had teenage girls, are/were you able to make it through those friction-filled times with your relationship fairly intact? If so, how did you do it?

Having the boys gone also gives me a small glimpse into what life would be like had the kids’ dad and I stuck with our original plan of having only two kids. After having twins sort of disrupted those plans (I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it, having twins is a lot like having one really complicated child), we debated heavily on whether or not we should have any more little ones.

Times were simpler when there were just the two of them and sometimes I miss those days very much. Hanging out with my girls has been quite enjoyable and oddly nostalgic. It makes me miss what seems like a much easier era, when my little girls and I would sit in the yard and pick “flowers” (actually dandelions), I’d push them on the swings, take them on daily walks, read them as many books as their hearts desired, watch their delight at the circus and buy little girl clothes and shoes. It was just us for four years and I got to know them well, probably much better than I’ll ever know my boys.

There are definitely advantages to having just two children, the biggest one being that a parent has far more opportunity for one-on-one time and really getting to understand a child. It’s just plain harder with more kids. Everything has been practically effortless with the boys gone, both because the girls are very independent and because there are just two of them. Less mess, less food to make, less laundry to do, less people to get out the door…it has been blissfully easy.

Still, I would never give any of my kids up (most days, anyway). As chaotic as it can get with four of them, I can’t imagine life without any of them. Yes, the craziness can sometimes make me want to run away screaming and crying, but I actually feel more at ease in the noise and disorder than I do when everything’s unnaturally clean and quiet.

Chaos = life, and I want to always have a house full of life and laughter.

How does the dynamic change in your family when someone is gone?

I’m happy to introduce  my guest blogger, Leah Ingram. Thank you for your great post, Leah!

This past Mother’s Day I wrote a posting on my Suddenly Frugal blog dedicated to my mother and the frugal lessons she taught me when I was growing up. But it got me thinking: what kind of frugal lessons did I hope I was passing on to my daughters? Granted, they’re only 11 and 13 right now, so I’ve still got plenty of time to teach them the importance of being smart with their money. But here are the four frugal lessons I hope they have taken to heart.

You Can Wear Clothes More Than Once. In my mind you can wear a pair of pants or a shirt until it is either visibly stained or noticeably smelly. I’d like to think that my kids feel the same, though I have plucked many a still-clean pair of jeans from the bathroom hamper and put them back in their dresser when no one was watching. Soon enough I know they’ll realize that it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to wash clothes (just wait until they’re out on their own) and so going for as long as you can in between loads of laundry is ideal.

Budgeting Is Key to Making Your Money Last. I’m so glad that my husband and I decided two years ago to begin giving our daughters their allowance monthly. This automatically forced them to figure out how to make their money last longer and made them rethink how they shopped—especially since my husband and I also decided that from here on in, the kids were responsible for buying themselves all non-essentials.

Buying New Isn’t Always the Best Option. Suddenly last year my younger daughter became label conscious. Brand names, especially on clothes, took on a new meaning, and seemingly overnight she wanted to wear the same maker clothes that all the kids at school were wearing. But she had a problem. Mommy and Daddy were no longer footing the clothing bill (see Lesson 2 above), and my daughter couldn’t afford brand-new, brand name clothing in those dimly lit stores with loud music. Thankfully, we introduced our daughters to the concept of consignment, resale and thrift store shopping, where they discovered they could indulge their desires for certain label clothing, albeit used, and not use up their entire allowance in the process.

Swapping and Borrowing Can Stretch a Dollar. In our pre-frugal life, we never balked at buying our daughters books to read. I mean, if there was one indulgence we shouldn’t feel guilty about, it would be buying books, right? Well it turned out to be wrong, especially after we reviewed our annual spending on books one year and discovered how much cash we were laying out in bookstores. So we reintroduced our daughters to the concept of the library, and suggested that if they wanted to read a book badly, they could borrow it from the library. We also explained that if they got lazy and forgot to return the book or, heaven forbid, lost the book, they would be responsible for the late fines. In addition to using the library again, my daughters got creative and began swapping books, DVDs and clothes with friends. These days they are well read and well dressed with nary a dime spent in the process.

Leah Ingram is founder of the Suddenly Frugal blog (www.suddenlyfrugal.com) and author of the soon-to-be-released book Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier on Less (Adams Media, 201), a book that promises to save a family up to $25,000 in a year.