Tired of making lunches

We have had a couple of good days. Really good days. All four little kids are getting up, getting dresses, eating breakfast, going to school, eating a snack, playing after school, spending a half hour reading or working on language skills, playing, eating dinner, playing, eating a snack, showering, and going to bed. The way it works is for me to be really organized and one or two steps ahead of them. I haven't been getting much sleep at night, but that is my doing. The kids are sleeping through the night. I just love my alone time, even if I spend it watching tv shows of no value. I dont mind doing errands, shopping, unloading the dishwasher, doing laundry, doing bills, cleaning...but I am so tired of making lunches and dinner! At dinnertime, everyone eats what I make or they eat fruit and yogurt. The only one I will make anything different for is Zhao Lei, otherwise I'd be making four different meals each evening. My rule is that everyone has to try eating whatever I made and if they don't like I will get them yogurt and fruit. I am willing to make them eat something they want so they aren't hungry at school. I make lunches every night after I put the kids to bed and straighten up. Sometimes it is 11:00 pm before I start on lunches. I usually make Zhao Lei some kind of noodle soup, fruit and a drink she likes from our local Chinese store. It's what she chooses and the container is always empty when she gets home. The other three are the problem. I'd buy hot lunch of it didnt cost $5 per child. I am way too cheap for that. Yes, I realize how good my life is if making my kids lunch and dinner is the worst part of my day.
Zhao Lei is doing really well. A friend of mine who speaks Mandarin called last night to see how she was doing. I said everything was going great except Zhao Lei never wanted to work on ESL apps othe iPad. They are pretty fun, but she lasts for about a minute then starts playing a game. I have to sit down and watch her do it. Sounds easy, but within seconds I get distracted with somethig else and she stops. I showed her that she can only fill I that she did her homework if she actually does it. Her teacher has said that doing ESL games is fine to cow t as her readi g every night. Valerie told Zhao Lei that she had to go to school Monday through Friday and do her homework. Zhao Lei asked Valerie if her kids had homework and seemed surprised when Valerie said they did. I'm sure she had homework at her school. I have a feeling no one made her do it. She told Valerie that I had signed her up at a Chinese school. Valerie said her kids took classes there too. Poor Zhao Lei! No sympathy there. Valerie was very nice to her and told me that Zhao Lei was a lot more talkative than most kids in China. She said Zhao Lei had called her auntie, which was good, it is a sign of respect. The little talk didnt really help the homework situation.tonight I pushed the issue and said she could only stay up later if she worked on the apps. And whenever I say i said something, I mean I acted it out. We are very good at communicating almost everything. It somehow works and is rarely uncomfortable for any of us. I wish I had learned some Mandarin. I was so caught up in the details of the adoption and traveling that I never got around to it. It is a big regret of mine.
Zhao Lei wanted me to help her get dressed in the morning and help her get ready for bed when we were in China. Clearly someone had told her that is one of the things moms do. Now that we are home she sees that my kids all get dressed by themselves. Sasha, my four year old, is the most independent. She gets up, gets dressed and Goes downstairs before the rest of them. At night she takes a shower and gets her pajamas on before we say a word. Amazing. Zhao Lei watched the other kids and now gets dressed on her own ithe morning. She still wants me to help her take a shower and needs me to be ithe room with her when she goes to sleep. Both things that I am fine with doing. I am around her every moment she is not in school. I know she needs the consistency and will need me to be the constant in Nuer life for months or years. Another things she learned by watching...last night she told said, "mom, I love you," before she fell asleep. Sweet. I tell all of the kids that quite often during the day, and then say it right before they go to sleep. It was really sweet to hear.
As I have sat here typing this, all three girls fell asleep. Brayden, who has been really well behaved since we got home, is being HARD. He ate dinner, ate a snack of a bowl of noodles before bed, and now wants to go downstairs to eat. My answer? No. I explained after the millionth time he asked to go downstairs that he can do whatever he wants to do, but if he chose to go downstairs he will go to bed early to Oreos night. The deal is that every minute he stays up past his bedtime one night gets subtracted off his time for the next night. He cannot be backed up against a wall, it always needs to be his decision or he will turn it I to a power struggle. Staying up late is a big deal to him. So, the threat of an earlier bedtime and me telling him I had to work on somethiing for a minute on the computer so he needed to wait a minute before telling me his decision seems to have done the trick. He has been silent for almost five minutes. Now I have to wait until he is OUT before I sneak out of here. Bummer, he's not quite out yet. I still have laundry to finish and lunches to make. Any volunteers?