The Daily Hailey

I had a fairly rocky night/morning, which resulted in me making a really dumb decision and being a jerk all morning. I was standoffish towards my kids, and grouchy. I did the bare minimum the entire time the kids were up. They went down fed, changed, and hugged and kissed, but without many cuddles or soft moments. It turns out that my constant lecturing Dekker on having a better attitude might need to turn around and attack someone new. Just trying to be straight up with you guys. Today has not been smooth, and its been my fault.

Dekker has noticed my attitude today. I’ve been polite to him, but short. I haven’t answered all his questions or played his games. So he knows. And he worked his little butt off. He tried hard to change his attitude and be helpful. I wrote a few days back about how he’ll hold his hand out for Laela to give him her toy if he wants it, and because she’s little and learning about passing, she pretty much always gives him what he wants. Today, when he would do that, he would thank her, then come show me what she had done. He would say “Laela gives this to me! Makes me so happy!” and then he’d go and thank her again. “Thanks Laela, giving me this toy.” It was a process, but he was making a solid effort to cover his bases and get it right. It was kind of adorable to watch.

My favorite thing Dekker has done today was towards the end of lunch. Our lunch is usually just known as “snack” actually. We all play downstairs during snack time, so its not structured at all. The food bowls always go in the same place on the same table, and the kids just come around and eat gradually. Its more fun and they tend to eat more, which I’m fine with, since its usually just fruit and veggies with some crackers to go with it. Today is was apples, cucumbers, and goldfish. Dekker is usually pretty possessive of his apples, but didn’t flinch when I gave Laela some bites of a slice. His only comment was “Oh, Laela likes apples!” I keep tabs to make sure Laela gets enough to eat, since she’s getting off the bottle, and sometimes when I think she’s distracted, I ask Dekker to bring her some crackers. He often fusses a bit, but always complies. I know he really dislikes actually putting food into her mouth, and often opts to put the crackers on the floor in front of her, or into an empty bowl. But today, he offered to bring her food. And he chose a cucumber. A cucumber is not something I’d ideally want Laela to eat off of our basement carpet, so I watched and he brought it to her and I saw him intentionally going through all the “steps” I’ve taught him. He came up to her and got right in front of her, and held the cucumber up right in front of her face so she knew it was coming. (Thats my favorite part because he takes it so seriously 🙂 ) She opened her mouth for it, and I saw him hesitate and bend down for a second, but he came back up and just stuffed that sucker into her mouth. She was shocked momentarily, but she likes cucumbers and handled it. Once he had fed her, he came back for a few cucumber slices himself and noticed that there weren’t many goldfish crackers left. His recent reaction has been to shovel them all into his mouth in one shot. I’m trying to teach him to save some for others but we’re still in the beginning stages of that. I saw him tip the bowl and say “Oh, just a couple…” and I said in my short tone of the morning “Don’t eat them all ok? Save some for Laela.” And he did! Not one little whiny sound escaped his throat. He passed me two and said “Two for Laela.” Then he ate two. “Two for Dekker.” Then he held one up shyly and said “One for mommy?” I smiled at him as he fed it to me. “Anunner for mommy!” I got another one. And then there was one left in the bottom of the bowl. Silence.

“Last one forrrrr…

Laela.”

And that was it. He put it in my hand with the other two for Laela, counted the three, and then took them over to her. I watched him come in front of her again, and she hung her mouth open as he popped them in there, one after the other after the other. Dekker came rushing back to me and asked “Makes mommy so happy?” Well of course it did. That little boy worked so hard to bring me out of my funk today. He shouldn’t have had to, but I appreciated his effort, and I love seeing that he really does aim to please, and that he wants to helps others.

We all have rough days.