You funny

Sethie is quite a little man. A little OLD man, I think. Last night we got home from the prophecy seminar late, but the kids zoomed around the house like giddy bees for a little while anyway. I caught one after another and put their pajamas on them. Then just as I was finishing filling Seth's sippy cup, I heard him say, "Mommy, I go nigh-night." I came around the corner and there he was, heading up the stairs to bed!

"Did you give Daddy nuggles and kissies?"

"Yets."

"Do you want your clothie and sippy?"

"Yets." He reached for them, then grinned and gave me a slippery kiss. "Nigh-night."

I followed him, unbelieving, figuring I really SHOULD be doing something to put my two-year-old to bed. He marched in his bedroom door, then looked up at me like, "Why are you following me?" and shut the door in my face. And I know him well enough to be sure that he waddled right to his little bed and dropped into it.

I guess my little boy is growing up after all! (People keep promising me they will.) Funny how different kids are. I can't imagine Anaya doing that at 14. Or even 24....

~~~~~

Speaking of Sethie, he is such a sweetie. He is just so cute. The other day he was building towers with some big Lego blocks. "No fall down!" he would instruct the tower of blocks, pointing his little preaching finger at it--then he would nudge it to destruction. "No fall DOWN!" he would repeat gleefully to the fallen mess, finger outstretched. He would pick them up and reassemble them, carefully grouping the Legos according to color. "No fall down!" he would sternly address each color group as he added it to the stack.

~~~~~

Seth was having so much fun eating with Auntie Annette last week. "You funny!" he chortled.

"Me, funny?" she laughed. "You are funny!"

"I not funny." Seth's eyes twinkled. "You funny. He funny (pointing to Uncle Brad). I not funny."

Open-mouthed awe

Speaking of eating with your mouth open, Anaya and I had a fascinating interaction on this very point this week. Unable to bear seeing one more mouthful being masticated, I told her I had had enough. "Anaya, do not chew with your mouth open any more. If I see the food in your mouth one more time, I am taking your food away."

Such unusual cruelty could not be borne with unflinching fortitude. "But Mommy, I CAN'T chew it without opening my mouth! I won't be able to eat any more!"

"Baloney. You just told me a few weeks ago that you could eat with your mouth closed now."

"No, I can't! I will get so hungry I will DIE!"

Iron-hearted Mommy was unmoved by the howls and begging, so eventually Anaya laid down the ultimatum. "Then I will just go to bed now."

"Alas! Go to bed then." (See what my poor pitiful children have to endure?)

Anaya slouched off to her room, wailing. From her bedroom I could hear loud muttering (probably prayer). At any rate, the depths of despair were overcome in about 40 seconds, and Anaya came bounding back to the table. "All right, I will TRY to eat with my mouth closed." She put a spoonful into her mouth and held it there uncomfortably, then pushed it around and gulped. "See? I can't do it!"

"Try it like this," I suggested, putting a bite in my own mouth, chewing and swallowing. "See? You push it onto your teeth with your tongue."

She deposited a bite in her mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. Her face lit up. "I CAN do it, Mommy! I can chew with my mouth closed!"

Just say yes

Anaya loves to draw Seth into fascinating conversations where his limited verbal skills give her imagination free reign. Today I overheard one such conversation.

“Do you want Skyler to swallow your little Bible?”

“Yets.” (He has such adorable pronunciation!)

“But then he would get owies in his tummy, and he would get the little pages stuck in his tummy.
Do you want him to get owies?”

“Yets.”

“But then we would have to take him to the dock-tor, and he would have to get…” she pondered the possibilities but couldn’t come up with anything fearsome. “And the dock-tor would have to get the little pages out of his tummy. So do you want to go to the dock-tor?”

“Yets.”

“Do you want Skyler to swallow your Bible again?”

“No.”

This was a disappointing turn of events. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“You mean you don’t want to go to the dock-tor?”

“No.”

Alas. The problem with friends who aren’t imaginary.

True friends

Lately Anaya has taken to defining friendship on the basis of who is like her. She exhorts Sethie to do whatever she is doing, so they can be “friends.” Sethie is her friend when he does whatever she commands him (an entirely Biblical concept cheerfully taken out of context). Or, Sethie is her friend when he does the same things she does.
This morning at breakfast, Anaya announced in delight, “Sethie is my friend!”
“Is that because he is eating the same cereal you are eating?” I responded dryly.
“Yes, but also because he is eating with his mouth open!”

TV trouble

We've been researching the effects of TV on children. Most of the concerns we read about have to do with conventional TV (which we don't have), such as commercials (which make them materialistic and junk-food-hungry), violence, and such. But some things might apply to video-watching, which we do sparingly engage in. I have Nest videos (Bible stories), a few Max Lucado children's videos, a few Baby Einstein (mostly classical music with toys prancing across the screen and children singing ABC's) and some others. Generally I don't think they're too dangerous.

One warning regarding the effects of TV watching caught my attention. It may "inhibit the development of their imaginations." Help. Maybe we need to watch more. This morning Anaya came to me whining, so I warned her she would have to go to her room. "Can you put me in your ear instead?" she asked. So I pretended to carefully pick her up by her hair and tuck her in my ear. She squealed and kicked and finally politely asked if I would take her out. I took her out and set her down, and she hugged me gratefully. "Thank you!"

Storytime with Anaya

"Once there was a lady and she didn’t want to have babies. She had seen other people with babies and it was lots of work. But she saw a man and wanted to marry him. So she got married and after a while she had a baby come out of her tummy. She named her Sally! And she thought maybe it wouldn’t be a lot of work to have a baby, but it WAS a lot of work to have a baby girl."

And on the road again...

Hooray! First, I have to tell you about a God Thing. (That's when something happens and I know it had to come from God.) Last blog, I told you I don't know how I'll get back to South Carolina, and that I needed someone to ride along. Well, shortly after that, my prayer partner Shenalyn knew of my dilemma and asked a friend of hers at Weimar, who was moving to Arkansas, "Hey, you wouldn't happen to need a one-way ride to Collegedale, would you?" And SHE DID! She was even going to have to rent a car one-way and everything. It was a little later than I had planned on coming back, but as we reflected on it, Alan realized we could use the frequent flyer ticket we were going to use to fly my mom back, and fly me out to visit him in South Carolina instead. So that's what we did!

Hooray! I'm spending the weekend with my beloved husband right now!

So I'm not going to waste it blogging...but just so you know.