It's only a matter of time before Theo is big enough to join the bathtub party. Giving Zhen a bath is like taking a bath. Kwim? He gets a little wild! Ruby thinks it's great and joins him in dousing the entire room.
That's OK because I needed to mop the bathroom floor anyway.
Ruby is loving her new brothers more than the other kids. Don't get me wrong, they all love Theo and Zhen! Ruby has taken to them in a very special way. Though she is the youngest child in the family, she has taken on the role of "the boss." Maybe she takes after me, maybe it's a girl thing, who knows?
"The boss" is often benevolent. She distributes toys, retrieves dropped bottles, and delivers fresh diapers and a package of wipes to the "big boss," me! She has made a habit of hanging around at diaper changing time to let me know just how stinky things are!! Oh, man. I seriously need to get that on video.
First thing in the morning "the boss" wants to know about Theo. Theo? Theo? That's what I hear. It sounds more like the word "dew" coming out of her little baby mouth. So cute!
So often parents are discouraged from adopting because of some perceived negative impact on their bio children. "What will they think?" "What will that do to them?"
I'll tell you what my kids think: They think Zhen and Theo are fantastic. They know that we still love them as much as we always have. They know that it is possible and a good thing to help other people who are in need, even if we have to far out of our way.
I'll tell you what it has done to them: It has made them better people. More loving. More accepting. More likely to have compassion. More likely to act on that compassion.
It's a good thing.
You can tell a child to "do good" or "be nice". You can read cute little children's books about compassion. But children learn best by seeing and doing. Compassion is such an abstract idea (especially in this day and age of self centeredness!), but to SEE you go half way across the world to go after these new brothers, to SEE you come home with these tiny people who need love, and especially to SEE them blossom and to HELP them blossom and to know they are a part of this really big thing...that is how you teach compassion to children.
ReplyDeleteIt is a VERY good thing!