I am sick. Again. This time around, I am suffering from a mild case of food poisoning, which is lovely, of course. I do not have a very high fever and can still move around, but the whole thing still is somewhat unpleasant. The Munchkin was stuck in the house with me all day yesterday, as I could not even bring her to Kita, due the poor physical state I find myself in. The Lad has a crazy work schedule and isn’t really flexible that way, so he couldn’t help out, either.

Very unexpectedly to me, the Munchkin was such a sweetie about the whole thing. She was in a brilliant mood, chatted to me in her very serious, very sweet way. I love to observe how her language evolves. She even says things like ‘Sit down, please’ very clearly now. One of her favorite phrases is ‘Mommy, weisst Duuuuu?’ which translates to ‘Mommy, you know whaaaaat?’.  It’s quite adorable, although unfortunately, these words are usually followed by an enquiry about her uncle or aunt.

I wish I felt differently about this than I do, but I just can’t ignore how especially my sister treats my daughter a lot of the time. There’s a distinct lack of respect and compassion. They don’t see each other very often, as my sister and brother in law are very busy and when we do meet up, the atmosphere is always strained and awkward, because I constantly try to shield my little girl from what my sister throws at her (and there is so much). Yet the Munchkin loves her auntie and uncle fervently and I am really worried about the influence they have on her.

For example, even now my sister comments on the Munchkin’s eating and tries to regulate it, while simultaneously feeding her things that we do not usually give to her. My sister will openly tell the Munchkin she needs to learn discipline when it comes to eating, calls her a glutton (and thinks she’s being funny when she does) and on the other hand feeds her cookies, hot dogs and the likes when she sees her. This behaviour disgusts me so much and I do not know how to handle it appropriately. It’s been going on for so long…by now I usually just sigh, tell her I do not want her to talk to my child like this and that my daughter can eat as much as she likes of whatever I offer her.

My instincts and natural ability to exercise moderation when it comes to food was shot to bits in my childhood. When my mother died, my grandmother and aunts wanted to console me, in any way they knew how. Suddenly there were rich meals and sweets in abundance, pretty much every day. This is when the problems started. My father never had so much of a sweet tooth and despised having candy or even things like fruit yogurt around the house. He demonized food like that, which eventually led my sister and me to hide things in our respective rooms. This is something we do to this day when we’re at home at our father’s house.

There have always been remarks on general appearance, clothes and weight, judgmental looks and sighs and the very clear message that I am just not ok the way I am. I do NOT want this for my daughter. I do not want her to think of foods in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, do not want to her to feel disciplined and most of all, I don’t EVER want her to think she’s not beautiful and wonderful just the way she is. Besides, so far the Munchkin is doing exactly what you would expect of a healthy child: She eats when she is hungry and she stops when she is full.

My baby is 2 1/2 years old and already my sister is starting to infiltrate her with awkwardness and weirdness as far as food is concerned. The Lad is furious, he wants to be much more aggressive about this than I am. And as always, it’s me….I do not want to take her aunt and uncle away from my baby, even knowing what this kind of weirdness has meant for me. Talking to my sister about this issue is impossible and I have long since given up. She feels she is entitled to talk that way, because in recent years, she has lost a lot of weight and is now considered to be at a healthy weight.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. After breakfast yesterday, the Munchkin completely surprised me by sitting at our dinner table with me and crafting for 3 1/2 hours straight – Cutting and ripping paper, gluing things, drawing alternatively with pencils, felt tip markers or crayons. I have never seen her so focused on anything for this long!

She laughed a lot with me, told me stories, asked for music – if you must know, her current favorites include ‘The Elephant Song’ by Eric Herman and ‘The Duck Song’ by Bryant Oden, the latter of which I frequently curse the Lad for -, cooked and baked for me in her kitchen and generally stayed close to me, snuggling and doling out kisses. Considering how much our Bean loves Kita and being outside, I am very grateful for how she handled yesterday.

Today I want to try to get some sewing done and complete the Christmas gift list for our little one – we’re apparently in a transitional phase as far as toys are concerned, she definitely needs more age appropriate stuff. I’ll also need to get some paperwork in order.

Speaking of which, I have finally received the document I needed from my professor. This is great, except he signed it in the wrong place, so I’ve been emailing back and forth with the examinations office until they decided to accept the document from him as an exception to the general rule (because my professor is head of the examinations board). Now I have to add a few more documents to complete my application and then hand in the whole lot at uni as soon as I can, which will hopefully be Friday. I am very glad things are moving along there.

The Munchkin went back to Kita today – I just hope the pickup will go smoothly. Off to the sewing machine!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 10th, 2010 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Baby Pill. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.