We got up early yesterday with the plans of visiting a local farm. The farm is open to the public and sounded like the perfect place for our little boy who loves all things animals. We looked at pictures of the farm early in the morning and he was very excited to be going.
The visit started off well and Jun Jun was excited to see the horses, cows, sheep, and chickens. He looks at pictures of all these animals in books all the time, but seeing them live seemed to scare him a little. He didn't want to let go of our hands and didn't want to be put down to walk on his own. For the first couple of hours we indulged him and carried every step of the way. -But then we thought it would be a good idea if he walked a bit on his own... this is where things started to fall apart.
By the time we got to the icecream stand Jun Jun was in a bad mood and was screaming about little things that we couldn't even begin to understand. We went ahead and ordered icecream and sat down to eat it... we didn't get very far before Jun Jun was having an all-out tantrum -complete with foot stomping, red face, screaming, arm flailing, and tears. We tried to let it go for a few minutes, but it was soon obvious we just had to admit defeat, throw out the icecream and hit the road.
We decided to stop at the grocery store and pick up food for a "real lunch". We sort of felt guilty for trying to turn a bowl of icecream and animal crackers into lunch. (We thought we'd have real food for lunch after Jun's nap). We stopped to have a picnic lunch and Jun seemed to be in a better mood so we thought the rest of the day would go well. I felt terrible for trying to teach Jun my bad eating habits. -But then when we were leaving the picnic area another tantrum began. I'm not even sure what started this one, but it was much worse than the previous one so we just got in the car and started the trip home. It didn't take long for Jun to fall asleep and we hoped he'd sleep for a couple of hours and mabye wake up in a better mood.
When we got home we took him into the house, but that was a big mistake because he woke up and started screaming again. After about 1/2 hour he fell asleep laying on me. -I had things to do, but for the sake of a little peace I decided sitting in one place for a while would be fine. This was working out just fine until Jun Jun peed on me! -He's potty trained, but when he sleeps we usually put a diaper on him because he has "accidents". I tried to wake him up calmly, but before I knew it he was once again screaming, crying, kicking his legs, flailing his arms...
The day pretty much continued like this and finally ended with a monumental meltdown that took about 1 1/2 hour to come to an end.
We've done some thinking and realize that all 3 year old children have off days and all 3 year old children have lots of tantrums, but we also want to make sure we are sensitive to the fact that it was only about a month ago that he was removed from his orphanage and only about 2 weeks ago that we arrived home so we're going to slow down a bit and we're going to try to tighten up our daily schedule a bit, we're also going to be a bit more sensitive to the fact that our having to carry him usually only happens in new places now, so if he's feeling a little uncomfortable and wants us to carry him in new places we'll just have to do that. We've been taking a lot of little day trips and he's probably just as happy to sit at home with his new parents. Maybe this won't make a bit of difference and maybe he was just having a bad day, but he doesn't seem to need or want a big adventure on a daily basis.
So far today is a much better day. We started the day off with a nice breakfast, skipped church, and had a great little Etta James dance party! Not all days are good days and Todd and I won't always make the right choices. -Realizing that is not all that easy, we want to give Jun the best life we can give him.
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