baaaaah

Jaelyn is at a growth stage where she’s eating voraciously. I mean – girl is EATING.

She could give the big bad wolf a run for his money (or for the nearest little pigs house – depending on how close you want to stay to the story).

So I’ve been trying to teach her this technique for assessing how full she is – before she mindlessly consumes the entire table spread before her.

She was teaching the same technique to Lynn the other day when Lynn said “I can’t stop eating these….”

“Mommy,” she said, “First you’ve got to close your eyes. Then you’ve got to take a deep breath [so far this is word-for-word my technique]. Then you’ve got to count TEN SHEEP. [?!?] Then you’ll know if your belly is full.”

Ten sheep? Well apparently Jaelyn has recognized (and conflated) the commonalities of the various meta-scripts I’ve been giving her to talk herself into / out of things – counting sheep is the classic help-you-get-to-sleep routine.

But it cracks me up that now each time my daughter wants to engage in a reflective decision, a meditative examination of her self and practices, she closes her eyes, and…

…in wander the sheep.

I can just see it now in ten years when its my turn to say the infamous line: “if all your friends were jumping off of a bridge, would you jump too?” – and then later as her friends hold a smoldering cigarette in her direction, and she’s considering whether to light up with them -- an uninvited herd of sheep come galloping out over the edge of a bridge in her imagination –

peace~