MeiMei is crawling boldly into the heart of our family, with her camera-ready grin and her engaging squeals. Her hands are so fast she could be a pickpocket, and perhaps pay for her education. As I carried her in the garden the other day, she reached out and grabbed two cherry tomatoes and had them in her mouth before I even noticed.
She still loves Daddy best of all, and prefers if he puts her to bed and gives her her morning bottle, but she seems quite satisfied with her new Mom, and of course ecstatic over the cats.
JieJie, however, is breaking my heart. She is so unsettled by her sister, that on Thursday and Monday she refused to go to school. On Thursday she cried all the way there and clung to my ankles in the classroom. Her teacher hugged her and I left with MeiMei, quite shaken. JieJie adjusted to her nursery school beautifully last year and only cried the first day, so I'm sure this has more to do with MeiMei than anything else.
Being a horrible slacker mom, and not wanting to stray too far from the school in case they called me to come and get JieJie, I schlepped MeiMei into the nail salon across the street, thinking I could give her the bottle I had prepared, and she would fall asleep on my lap. But no sooner were my legs slathered with a seaweed smelling stuff that made me crave sushi, than MeiMei started to wail. My feet were wrapped in pointy white elf boots that cooked the seaweed. "Twenty minutes,'' I was told. MeiMei screamed. The only other customer was the mother of a 14-month-old, and she said she understood, but she didn't have her poor unhappy child slung over her lap, or even in the salon. The employees were kind and put up with the noise. i felt trapped and self-indulgent.
Eventually, MeiMei fell asleep and forgot all about the indignities of the salon. We went home in a thunderstorm, and played on the bed with a rubber duck and a rubber fish for more than an hour until she knew which was which in English.
JieJie has not bounced back so rapidly. At her request we sent her to the morning school session on Monday as a trial, although, when 8:15 a.m. rolled around she was back in meltdown mode. On Monday night she said she had been very brave at school. No details. She decided that she wanted to go mornings every day. My heart sunk as I realized that mornings may make JieJie happy, but when I return to work, and my night shift, I will have only a few hours with her until the weekend comes. Perhaps that is a selfish way of looking at it, but I thought afternoon school would put the children on my schedule for another year and maybe two, preventing any drastic decisions that might take me away from a job I enjoy. Mostly.
Although the school schedule seems settled, JieJie does not. She broke down a few more times during the evening over seemingly minor concerns. Of course she is mourning the days when she was the one and only. Work-weary Daddy took over MeiMei. I made JieJie a grilled cheese (or girl cheese, as she calls it) with crusts trimmed and fed it to her along with strawberries. We looked at Halloween costume ideas on the computer. She chose a dense, 30-page, Jenny the Cat book for her bedtime story.
i'm bracing for another storm in the morning.
I did warn you of JieJie regressing! Obviously she wants more attention and love and of course, wanting to go back to the times when it was just the three of you. Carve out "special time" with Mommy or Daddy only, even if it's just 15 minutes. Give her extra hugs and kisses and lots of reassurance. And perhaps, have her help you make the milk bottle for meimei. So it will make her feel she's the grown up, she's the older sister. It's obviously going to take time for this adjustment period. I had the same moment after I gave birth to my youngest one. There were ugly moments, but eventually we got over it. Hang in there!!!
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