Hit and miss

I heard it down the hallway. "Ow! You're the meanest person EVER!"

I sighed as I heard the door slam. I was pretty sure I knew who was harassing one another without looking. "Anaya! Come here."

One angry-faced girl flounced into the room. "He slapped me!" she wailed.

"Skyler!"

A reluctant face with two smoldering brown eyes appeared in the doorway. "I didn't mean to."

"How did you hit your sister without meaning to?"

"Well," he paused, searching for an explanation. "I tried to miss her, but I missed and accidentally hit her."

Heavenly thoughts about earthly realities

As I tucked him in bed the other day, Skyler said, "Mommy, I'm glad you give us consequences."

Since this was not at all in keeping with his behavioral theme of the day, I had to smother a smile. "Really? Why?"

 "Because if you give me consequences, I know it's because you want me to go to heaven. And getting consequences makes it so I will be more likely to be in heaven."

The theologian developing...

"Mommy," Skyler asked, "What if I think I have confessed all of my sins, but I forgot one? When Jesus comes, will I be able to go to heaven?"

"Don't worry, Sweetheart," I assured him. "You confess everything you know. And you give your heart to Jesus. If you have given Him your whole heart, you are okay."

"Whew! That's good to know!" He paused. "Mommy, I'm so glad Daddy is a pastor, and you are a counselor. That way when I have questions like this, I can ask, and you will tell me the answer. And if I ever forget and stop following Jesus, you will help me."

When you don't need rules, just principles...

Little angels

Tonight I overheard the boys practicing saying Romans 6:23 together from memory. It was unbearably sweet and heartwarming. Then at bedtime, I told the kids it was time to put their Bibles away. I turned out the light, but Skyler immediately disappeared into the bathroom. Seth remained in his bed squinting at his Bible.

"Buddy, you can read tomorrow," I assured him. "It's time to sleep."

"But Mommy, I want to read The Lord's Prayer."

"I will say it to you. You need to sleep now."

"I can say it myself. I already know it," he smiled. "I just like reading it in the Bible."

By this time, Skyler seemed to have grown roots in the bathroom. I was about to knock on the door when he came out of the bathroom, clutching his own little Bible carefully as he turned off the light.

I love my little boys.

Thou shalt not steal

Tonight the boys and I had to stand around for a few minutes in the grocery store after checking out, waiting for Anaya to get out of the bathroom. To pass the time, the boys fiddled with the little toy vending machines. They had no quarters, but he peered hopefully inside each spout for a free toy.

"Mommy! Look!" they suddenly came to me, squealing. "These came out of one of the machines. When we opened it, they were there. We have to tell the lady!" They held out two little plastic capsules full of colored rubber bands.

By "the lady," of course, they meant the cashier where we had just checked out. I took the two capsules to her and explained. "Oh, they can keep them!" she assured me.

I returned to the boys and handed them their treasures.

"Oh wow, Mommy!" they bubbled. "We can keep them?"

"You know what?" Seth's eyes suddenly grew round with horror. "We could have stolen these. If we had just hidden them, we could have sneaked out."

"Yeah," Skyler agreed soberly. "But we would never have enjoyed them. We would feel bad when we looked at them. And you would have seen that we had them and asked us."

"Not necessarily," I admitted. "I might have thought Daddy bought them for you while I was gone. But who would have known?"

"Jesus would," Seth burst out.

"And we would have too," Skyler added. "And we would have felt regret. And then, when Jesus came, we would have had to face the consequences."

I'm so glad their little moral backbones are developing. :)

Misplaced faith in the resurrection

You know how you can be walking through the store, not conscious there is music playing, until some phrase jars you into consciousness of the words? Yeah...that happens in parenting too.

The other day as my small herd clambered into the car, the blur of random jabbering suddenly stopped sounding blurry.

"Is he still dead?"

I'm a believer in the resurrection. I am. And I was very interested in knowing what was potentially being resurrected in my back seat.

"Is WHO still dead?"

The boys seemed surprised I was interested.

"Our calopidder," Skyler volunteered cheerfully. "We had a calopidder that we left in the car."

"He was already dead," Seth assured me. "But we just wanted to see if he would be alive again."

Wet Blanket Mommy

Bedtime silliness drives me bananas.

It might not be so bad if I didn't have TWO little boys bouncing off the walls--and each other--and getting exponentially goofier every minute. If I don't put a stern stop to it, the tiredness makes them slide into nothing-stops-the-giggling mode. Nothing, that is, except separating them, or spanking them--and even then only sometimes. When I can't separate them into different rooms because I'm trying to put them to bed--let's just say, it makes me want to rip my hair out. Or someone else's.

So tonight, as I was toweling Skyler's hair dry after a swim at the pool, he began spiraling downhill into goofwad mode. "Skyler, stop being silly," I warned him.

"Mommy. "He gazed up at me sorrowfully. "Why won't you let me do my main passion?"

On racial profiling...

Anaya informed me the other day that she believes it is almost time for her to start preaching now. A little later, she brought me a notebook.

"I am planning what I am going to put in my PowerPoints," she announced. "Here's what I am planning."

"People need to realize that racism is bad!" she glowered. "So that's what I am going to talk about."

I'm glad she gave me the interpretation on that...

Wedding bliss

Yesterday we went to a wedding...with three children. (This, by itself, might make some people question our sanity. For those who still think there is a possibility we are sensible people...we also took them to a 2 1/2 hour graduation the same day.)

Thankfully, they are getting old enough to survive such adventures. This was evidenced by the fact that we actually made it to the wedding on time (barely!) and were able to sit through all of the bridal processional. (Well, depending on your definition of sitting...Skyler was rolling around under the pew part of the time, but there was no raucous noise, so I'm counting that as a success.)

Anaya was, of course, no trouble, having been enraptured with the entire wedding process since age 2 (no joke). She positioned herself next to the aisle with her hot pink camera, and was pretty much mesmerized from the start.

After the parading in of the bridal party, when everyone was up front lookin' pretty (mainly Ruthie and girls--no offense, Joe and friends!), I took the boys and a bag of toys out to the mothers' room so they could play quietly. I pulled out an assortment of cars and was about to leave them when Seth objected.

"But Mommy, I want to see the wedding."

"Why, Buddy?"

"I want to hear what the preacher says, so I can study it afterward."

Really? Wow. How do you argue with that?

So Skyler was left playing by himself while Seth trooped back into weddingland to sit with Daddy and me. All went surprisingly smoothly, and Skyler even joined us for the last ten minutes or so, sneaking in with his bag of toys and clambering onto Daddy's lap.

"Did they kiss yet?" he whispered.

"No. Did you want to see that?"

He grinned and wriggled in slightly sheepish glee. "Yes."

A little child shall lead

A few days ago I was puttering around in the kitchen making breakfast when I heard Skyler steadily plodding through Genesis 1 in the living room. "And every...wing-ed bird..." Peeking around the corner, I saw him laboring over the huge family Bible on our coffee table.

"Sweetie, what are you reading?" I asked, squatting beside him.

He beamed at me. "I wanted to read the Bible by myself today."

"That's great! But you know, it's better not to just read, but to actually study it. You might get more out of reading just a few verses and thinking about them." I gave him a few suggestions on how to visualize Creation and make practical applications to his day regarding what he was reading. "And especially," I added, "you need to pray that God will help you to understand and to love Him more through your time with Him."

"That's right, Mommy," he looked up at me with his (always melting me!) big brown eyes. "Because if we read just so we can get done as fast as we can, so we can go play, it doesn't count with God! We might read just so we can say, 'I finished reading my Bible' and feel good. But then we missed loving God."

Soup is good food

Winter, to me, is soup weather. I love chopping a bunch of organic stuff I glean from the garden or farmers' market, with some potatoes, lentils or tomatoes, and feeling like I am pouring pure nutrition into my thriving saints' little tummies.

The saints who own said tummies are not always as enthusiastic.

"Can I just have Goldfish crackers?"

"Can I make something for myself?"

"Can I have hot dogs instead?"

After several (I'd love to say patient) sessions of explaining that food is for the purpose of making us healthy, not always happy, and that Mommy slaved over the hot stove to make that stuff you don't like, I went into Sensible Mommy Mode, trying to involve them in the preparation of the meal. When I discovered one afternoon that we were out of onions, I sent Skyler outside to pick wild onions from the yard (something he loves doing, which leads to onion breath poisoning when we are driving in the car sometimes--but that's a different blog). After blending the soup (carrot-curry-coconut-ginger, for those who are interested), I poured it back into the pot to cook the onions. However, the green onions gave it an entirely different color than usual.

"Oh wow!" Skyler exclaimed when he caught a glimpse of lunch. "Anaya! Sethie! Come see what we have for lunch!" He pointed into the pot as they scurried into the kitchen. "Green goo swamp!"