sunday afternoon

Anders is sleeping, Erik is playing in his room... and I'm just resting. Sundays are so busy I need the rest, though I do feel slightly guilty listening to Carl doing Bible study with the youth while I'm relaxing. The kids are listening pretty well today, though.

I'm reading a book called "Unconditional Parenting". I really like it, it resonantes with how I feel. But in some ways it also feeds right into my weaknesses as a parent, and it's certainly not Christian in perspective. I have to figure out what I can apply to our lives, and how I can do it. Part of it really hits hard for me, though. I feel like I'm getting lazy with Erik--if he does something I don't want, I just send him to his room. It's sort of meaningless. The book challenged me to think about WHY I do what I do. Is my purpose to just get him to do what I want? Not really--I want Erik not to push Anders because I want him to have a loving spirit with others, and proper respect for others' bodies, not because I tell him not to push Anders. So how do we achieve that? How do we communicate to him the REASON for what we're telling him? I don't want him to conform just because I tell him to do something. While that kind of obedience plays a part in his life, I don't want it to be the motivating factor for everything he does... "I don't want to push Anders because then I'll have a time out." I want... "I don't want to push Anders because he might get hurt." Others-centered. I know it's a long-term goal, so right now we just need to figure out how to get there. And of course, it's what we want for Anders, too.

In other news... Anders is finally starting to eat more! He loves brown rice, and chicken, too. This morning the first thing he wanted when he saw me was to get in his chair and eat a banana. I feel triumphant when I can get him to eat a full bowl of rice cereal--he actually takes it off of the spoon! We're still proceeding slowly with food trials, but it's nice to have SOME things to feed him. And on that food-related note--it appears that tomatoes are a problem for Erik, too. We haven't had any in awhile, because I can't eat them at all anymore. But last night we let Erik eat ketchup. He had an awful bloated stomach, he didn't sleep that well, and he had an explosion today. Not only that, for the first time in 3 weeks he went in his underwear. Now we know. I have several tomato-free recipes, and I found some tomato free ketchup online. The problem with the online one is that they don't tell you what's in it. I emailed her, and she sent me an email back asking me to call her. Right, exactly what I want to do.