As my 8 month old becomes more and more mobile, I've started to face some opposition from my 2.5 year old about what toys are "mine" (hers), and what belongs to both kids.

My stance has always been that aside from a few special "lovey" type toys, the toys in our house were all meant to be shared by both girls. Except now when I think about it, my older daughter is right. Most things were exclusively hers first, and maybe it isn't very nice of me to suddenly expect her to share everything. The toy in question that she wanted to take back from her little sister last night was a Little People airplane that my sister gave her for her first birthday. So logically, it's kind of hard to argue that my sister bought it for both of them...but I think it's silly to deem it "special", because it isn't as if I'm going to buy another one exclusively for DD#2.

DD#1 didn't argue with me when I said it was to be shared, and in this case since DD#2 wasn't getting upset about a substitution, I was fine with DD#1 giving DD#2 a different Little People vehicle (a car) and taking the airplane. But. As DD#2's opinions get stronger, I'm thinking about how I'll handle this fairly. For now I'm trying to make sure to make a point of buying some things I want them both to have to play with "for" DD#2, so that she also has her own things to share with DD#1.

How do you handle the issue of which toys belong to which child, and what they have to share with each other vs. what they don't?