Grow with me

-five-

Jesy

I had made curry for tea with fingers crossed tight that the little one would like it. I could hear the girls all laughing in the other room and the occasional squeals of Perrie and it made me so happy. We had a new little addition to the family and I couldn't be more pleased. Jade, Leigh and I are best friends and I was more than happy to help this angel grow up happy and feeling safe with us.

"Foooood!" I shouted into the other room for the girls as I laid the dishes out around our small table. Suddenly all three girls ran into the room. Jade and Leigh were obviously a lot faster than Perrie as she wasn't as confident in running, I watched as she gave up and began crawling instead. I lifted her into the chair next to Leigh when she reached us and gently tucked a tea towel into the neck of her jumper and laid one on her lap too. I'm sure Jade wouldn't appreciate her clothes being stained with curry. She giggled and clapped her hands then I put the smaller bowl in front of her. She looked at it confused and prodded a piece of chicken with her fingers.

"'ice?" She asked Leigh as she watched her eating it. However, she was blowing it first.

"It's very yummy baby, try some," Leigh smiled and held a fork for her. Perrie furrowed her eyebrows, pushed the fork away and used her fingers instead. She picked up a piece of chicken and dropped it into her mouth before any of us could warn her it was hot. I watched as Jade facepalmed as soon as the chicken came back out of Perrie's mouth and onto the table. Leigh laughed and I just watched as Perrie's eyes filled with tears.

"No no tears baba," I said quickly and got up. I picked up the fork, stabbed another piece of chicken and blew it a little bit before I held it in front of her lips. Rather than taking the chicken off the fork, she licked the sauce off the chicken causing me to laugh and Leigh to chuckle even more. I think Perrie liked entertaining us now. Nevertheless, her eyes went wide.

"'Ice!" she giggled and ate the whole chicken. I chuckled and put some more on the fork for her. She began eating it off the fork and giggling at me. 

After a while she began to get bored though. She pushed the fork away and sighed. I frowned.

"Don't you want anymore baba?" Leigh pouted slightly. Perrie shook her head and rested it on Leigh-Anne's shoulder.

"What about from the aeroplane?" I giggled and moved the fork around. She peered up at me and I saw the smirk on her face.

I made aeroplane noises and moved it closer to her face and made it touch her nose. She giggled and opened her mouth, giving me opportunity to feed her.

-

Leigh

After dinner, we collectively decided on a film to watch. We couldn't have anything too mature because we wanted to keep Perrie's attention the TV. However we didn't want anything too childish as we didn't want to be bored out of our minds.

We had decided on Mary Poppins Returns. I was hoping the animations and the songs would keep Perrie interested.

Her dinner went down really well in my opinion. After a couple of flights with the aeroplane and rides with the choo choo train she completely gave up and we had to as well when she started crying but most of her dinner was eaten. I think she could have been full up to be honest, we didn't know how much she got fed at home and even with a smaller portion she did have food before. We could have offered her some ice cream but we don't want to teach her that not finishing your dinner gets you desert because it doesn't. We all understood that if we were going to raise Perrie right there would have to be discipline. Yet that was something we can ease her into- rules and punishments. All three of us knew that punishments were going to be a difficult thing to grasp with her as we didn't know what happened in her past and did not want to trigger anything.