Today was pretty good. The girls had fun at church together. It was Riley's first time in big kid church and she loved it!! One of the helpers said that Madi really helped make Riley comfortable and helped her a lot which was incredibly sweet! They were able to sit together which was great.
After church, we had lunch and then I have been trying to get some things together for school. Takes quite a bit to get everything ready. I created the fine arts schedule and was quite frustrated that the program wasn't working correctly. Jeremy helped me (thank God he knows what he is doing!) even though I wasn't as kind as I should have been. Riley reminded me that everyone needs help and that Daddy is a great helper. Was very sweet of her.
The cable guy came to fix our internet and hopefully we're done dealing with it going off all the time. Then Jer took Julia down for her nap. For my room at school, I want to hang some new pictures up above my desk and saw this cool idea on Pinterest about using mod podge along with canvas and words from songs. So I called my mom to see if she'd want to do it with me and the girls. She was all up for it!
I took the girls to Michaels and got the supplies and we headed to her house. We created some really fun canvas prints. Though I'd definitely say they are all beginner tries and I'm hoping to get more canvas to play around with making mine better. But it was quite fun.
The girls went swimming with my parents and then we got ready to leave. Madi asked what we were having for dinner. Lately she's been not so nice about what we are eating and complaining about the food in one way or another (sandwiches again??!! - having to eat them two days in a row for lunch; ugh - I don't like that; sour faces). There is one meal she doesn't like very much and we make it so it's not very spicy as she doesn't like spicy, but it does keep our food costs down and we are trying very hard to keep costs down as life is truly expensive. She hasn't been respectful of this and can't possibly understand it and we don't expect her to. But we do expect her to be thankful for what she has and to respect the fact that we do our best to keep them eating healthy and try to give them what they like for the majority of the time.
So she asks what we are having for dinner. I shared that it's sausage pasta. She made a horrible face and grunted something. She has been warned that if she complains about the food that we will simply serve her rice as she was accustomed to that over there and that it will give her time to think about all that she has here. Not to be super mean about it - but it is easy to forget how hard things were in the Philippines and how much she complained about eating rice constantly. She has definitely forgotten that. Which is good as it means that her nourishment is being sustained and then some here.
Madi then started asking if it was on the menu and if that was what was planned and why we were having it. She then started making comments about how she is starting to love sausage pasta and I quickly called her out on it as she was then trying to convince us not to give her rice. There were other factors to this conversation that had to do with her lack of thankfulness and her demanding things to go her way that contributed to this.
So for dinner she had rice. A very large plate full of rice.
I did talk with her about why she was having it before dinner and explained that she is to be respectful to us and respect the fact that we work extremely hard to provide the best we have for all of them and that she needs to be respectful of the fact that we give her what we have.
During dinner, she tried to talk us out of the decision of her having rice and complained about being hungry. She asked if she could have sausage pasta. So Jer and I talked. During my talk with her earlier, she just stared at the wall and said nothing. No emotion. No "I'm sorry for being disrespectful." Nothing. I told her it was dinner at the end and she just popped up and said "ok!" So we decided that if she was to truly learn her lesson and if we were to follow through, it would do more in the long run than to give in. And we know that she won't starve as she'll have plenty of food tomorrow.
She went to bed around 8:30pm tonight and I'm sure she'll be hungry tomorrow and hoping I'll have a chance to talk with her about it all. Not easy following through on this one, but she doesn't seem to learn lessons easy and manipulates every chance she gets. The only times we've seen her really learn is when the hard consequences are given and followed through with. Even then she pushes, but at least she knows to expect that we'll do what we say we'll do.
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