Muffingate

This week has been so hectic - I am in the middle of a longer post, but don't know when I can get a chance to finish it.  One thing I've been trying to work on this week is dealing with tricky food issues that seem to keep rearing up every time I think we're getting somewhere.  This adorable little Ruby, so sweet and cute, can turn into a total monster over food from time to time.  I am really struggling with how to handle it, and, sadly, I think I'm not doing too well.  Some days I think I'll just give her what she wants and that will calm her down - she'll see that food is available to her here and she can always have more if she's hungry.  Then other days I decide that I need to be more controlling about what she is eating and help her learn the difference between hunger and desire.
Of course, this is sending mixed messages and probably just increasing her anxiety about food.  I try to apply the same rules to her that I have for the boys, but they are so unconcerned with food that I don't think it's working.  This morning, I had bought chocolate chip muffins as a treat because today is Finn's Spring Sing, but I told them they all had to eat a banana before eating the muffin.  Gus ate a banana and a muffin, Finn ate half a banana and then decided that the muffin wasn't worth having to eat a banana and stopped eating altogether, and Ruby broke her banana into small pieces, hid them all over the house while I was getting dressed, pushed a chair over to the counter, helped herself to a muffin, ate half of it and then sat on the other half the minute she saw me coming into the kitchen.  Devious!  From the trail of crumbs, smashed banana around the house, and the guilty look on her face, plus the chocolate muffin all over her pants, I was able to piece together what had transpired.  So then, childishly, I was angry that she had clearly done something she knew she wasn't supposed to do, and in the process, created a giant mess all over the house.  At that point, we were late leaving to get the boys to school, so I just grabbed her and loaded everybody into the car.  Being separated from the remains of the muffin was, of course, the most tragic thing that Ruby could imagine, and she spend the whole ride to the boys school screaming her head off bitterly.  It was quite the way to start the day.
Anyway, muffin-gate is just a typical, daily struggle over here.  Probably pretty much my fault for even expecting a child to not take a chocolate chip muffin that was sitting right there.  Some days are better, some worse, and I keep hoping that one day everything will click.  I've talked to the doctor, other adoptive moms, a parenting counselor, and any number of friends and family, and gotten lots of really good advice that sometimes helps, so hopefully we'll just keep moving forward and get to an easier place.  Ruby's been with us almost exactly a year - Feb 15th is our gotcha day - and so many things have smoothed out so much that it seems ridiculous to worry about this.  But you know how you can look back at things you worried about after they have passed and realize that you were being silly - it was just a phase after all?  But when you're dealing with something new as a parent - whether it's a baby who won't sleep or a picky eater or a 15-month-old who isn't walking yet - you don't know that it will pass.  You don't know that it's a phase, and you worry that it's some sort of indicator that you don't know what you are doing and you are screwing your kid up.  And actually, who really does know what to do?  Not me, but at least I can be comforted that all of the things that I worry about will probably turn out fine, while the things I haven't even thought about will be the ones hurled back in my face years from now, just the way I used to do to my poor parents.  Sorry Mom & Dad ...

A year ago ...: 12 Days to Go: Snow, Baby Shower, Injera & More

I am so tired tonight, and Matt is at art class, and I have all my little kiddies in bed early and have just had a hot shower and am cozy in my pjs, about to enjoy a glass of wine, and then I realized that our social worker is coming tomorrow for our 1 year home study!  Crazy, and a bit of a bummer because our house looks like a lion chased a herd of wildebeests through it this afternoon, and that won't go over so well with the social worker.  But, that aside, I can't believe it's been almost one whole year since we were almost, almost ready to go get Ruby.  I was doing a countdown to the day we left on the blog, and I remember being so full of excitement and nervous anticipation for the trip and the baby and our new life.  So I decided to look back at the blog from this time last year, and it's so funny to read what I was thinking about.  It has proved quite prophetic, as I waxed poetic about how eager I was for the excitement of the adoption to wear off so that we could move into the mundane chores and life as a family part.  That's exactly where we are now, and, as predicted, it's a time of life that is filled with little moments and lots of work.  So anyway, here's what we were up to a year ago today ...


and then there were five ...: 12 Days to Go: Snow, Baby Shower, Injera & More: "This past weekend ranks up there with some of our best ever. For starters, we had a huge, beautiful snow on Friday night - unusual for..."