Our first day with our temporary big girl is done (or at any rate, both girls are in bed and I haven't heard anything out of them in the last few minutes), and it went well. We picked her up this morning on our way to church, so we had her most of the day. She went into Sunday School, but sat with us for the first part of the service (which was a celebration of babies and small children in the church) and then chose to come with me to help out in the nursery for the rest of the service.
It is, for me, mentally tiring to spend all day with someone I don't know, especially if I'm responsible for them! But other than that it has been better than I expected. Big girl is doing her best to make herself agreeable, and succeeding quite well. There were one or two times I think she recklessly disregarded her own opinion when expressing agreement with me on something, and I noticed that she's very good at observing what people around her are doing and adjusting her behavior to fit in. However, she is not shy about asking for things she wants (especially if it involves food) and she has told us some of her likes and dislikes. Some of the things she likes are gardening (which she knows more about than I do!), cooking, art, playdough and spicy food. She volunteered to help me with both weed-pulling and cooking. So now I have some ideas of what we can do together for the next few days! Esther thinks she is The.Most.Exciting.Person.Ever and wanted to be with her every minute. Big girl clearly has experience with smaller children, and they played together most of the afternoon without getting into a single fight! For the most part they played playdough, and I was able to do a bunch of dishes and study Chinese while keeping an ear out on them in the living room. I was tickled, though, when Big girl wanted me to "taste" her playdough "food"!
One of our new house rules, which we are getting to test out this week, is that children's bedrooms are private. No child may go into another child's room without being invited, and then there must be a parent present. Well, they both got the "invited" part (although Esther is not keen on it!), but early on in the day I did come to check on Esther after a minute away to find that she had been invited into Big girl's room to watch her put away her stuff! So apparently, the "parent" part of the rule went in one ear and out the other. It wasn't an issue the rest of the day, as Big girl mostly chose to play with Esther in the living room. We'll see how the relationship goes the rest of the week.
1 comment:
Sounds like a pretty good first day.
I get mentally tired spending all day with people I don't know also. Actually, I get mentally tired spending all day with any people. Which is why it's beyond me why He had placed 6 children in my care..WAY too much talking is needed on my part!
Prayers for good times the remaining six. Jennifer
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