Life In A Police Officer's Family Book 2

Family Time part 2

Grant's POV

When lunch arrived everybody was ready to stop playing and eat some lunch. Well, everyone except my youngest daughter. When I signed to her that it's lunch time and we can go back to playing after we ate, she told me no, and turned her back and began running in the opposite way. I easily caught up with her and scooped her up, but the way she was yelling and screaming, trying to kick and hit me made me put her down and stand her in front of me. I signed that she was in trouble and if she wanted to have any time after lunch to play she better go over to the blanket where the food was and sit down and eat and then we would be dealing with her attitude. I don't think my heart broke after the first time I had to punish Katrina like it did when I just saw the look on Amelia's face when I told her she was in trouble. I sighed when her little lip began to quiver. I picked her up and brought her to the blanket and then fixed her a plate, which she sat and ate with her head down.

After she was done eating, she looked at me and signed if she could go play, I told her no, she was in trouble and she needed to wait until I was done eating and then we would take care of her punishment. The look of pure terror flashed across her face and for a second, I had second thoughts about how to punish my children,

“Time out for 5 minutes, sitting right next to me, then you can go play,” I signed to her.

When I see the look of terror leave her face, I knew I need to have a discussion with not only her, but also the boys because I'm going to guess that me having different punishments for her will cause them to feel angry and I don't want them to start feeling they need to retaliate thinking that I'm giving her special treatment. I didn't want them to resent Amelia for being treated differently. I’ll most likely spank Amelia at some point, but not until she fully trusts me and until she is healed emotionally from her past.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After Amelia had finished her timeout and we all went to play a field game and around 6 pm, we decide that it was time to pack up and head home. It seemed all the kids were getting irritated with one another and the fun time was turning into a time of frustration for the adults.

“I love you, drive home safe,” Katrina tells me and I give her a hug after I give the kids a hug.

“I’m supposed to be telling you that,” I tease. I give her a hug and kiss her forehead and then I hug Tyler as they both get into their car and head in the opposite direction.

“Can I go with George and stay the night with Elijah?” Joshua asks me.

“No, I want you to come home with us, I believe you have homework that still needs to get done and I need to have a talk with your brother and you about something,” I tell him and he gives me an eye roll that I choose to ignore because I don’t want to deal with trouble right now. I’m too tired and just want to be able to go home.

“Fine, whatever,” he answers me before walking over to let Elijah know what I said. Elijah doesn’t look happy about me saying no, but George is quick to shut down his attitude.

When we are all in the jeep, I drive home and give the boys instructions to help bring things inside as I bring Amelia inside and bring her to take a shower. I learned the first week that she lived with me that she didn’t like taking baths and preferred to take showers so I allowed to her to do that. I stay near the bathroom, in case she needs something. We have come up with that if she is in the shower and she needs something that she will knock 3 times on the shower wall and I’ll go in to see what she needs.

After her shower, I bring her to bed and I help her climb in. We have a conversation about how the day went and how much she enjoyed hanging out with the family and wants to do it again. I told her that we will be doing it again for sure and then I told her it was time to go to sleep because tomorrow we had to go to the stores and do some shopping. She put her head on the pillow and I rubbed her back as she fell asleep and once she was asleep, I went downstairs to see Johnathan and Joshua looking at me…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________