While things are certainly starting to settle in to a routine on some levels, we still have a ways to go on others. The lils are doing well for the most part, but they miss home a lot and need a lot more attention than they have historically wanted. This is an adjustment for me too and more often then not, if the attention isn’t there, they let me know LOUDLY. Their behaviour has an ebb and flow to it, good for a while, then bad. The good is filled with calm and happy fun, the bad is generally filled with fights, not listening, time out pile-ups, and acting out everywhere and anywhere.

I know this is to be expected, but I hoped we would have settled to their normal selves by now. They haven’t, so we continue to search for ways to make things smoother for them. I have done a tonne of casual observation of their interactions with people, and have noted a trend that is really starting to bug me. I first noticed it with our driver and maid. If the lils were misbehaving around them, things like messing up the bed right after it was made, or climbing over the seats to get to the back of the car, my attempts to get them to stop were consistently met with “it’s okay, it’s okay”. I thought at first that it was because they love and are amused by the lils and also because they didn’t want me to be upset. While I wasn’t really upset with the lils, I didn’t want this kind of behaviour to become the norm.

Then I started noticing it elsewhere. When we were shopping and they were monkeying around in the stores, all the sales people would tell me “it’s okay”. If they were yelling in placed they shouldn’t, people would tell me “it’s okay”, if they were making messes where they shouldn’t, “it’s okay”. It is starting to drive me a little batty.

They hear this, and now I have become the bossy mom that they don’t need to listen to, apparently. It keeps getting worse. We were in a music class recently when Woo wouldn’t share an instrument that was being passed around to all the children. It is something that he has at home in Ottawa, and he realized it wasn’t here when he saw it. I tried to explain that he could get it back after all in the class had a chance, but he dug his heels in and started to get very upset. The teacher came over and started to tell me that it was okay, so I calmly looked at her and said, “actually, it’s NOT okay”. She thought about it, agreed with me, and asked that he pass the instrument on.

Woo did pass it on, and I felt a little vindicated. I wish there were more people who reacted like the five-year-old sitting beside Woo. When he started to get upset and refuse to pass the instrument on, she looked at him and said “that’s not very good sharing”. She was right.