Dirt is Not a Side Dish

Kids and dirt: a natural combination.

Especially MY kid and dirt, it would seem. Perhaps I have become jaded by all the kids in daycare who I saw eat handfuls of sand everyday before anyone could stop them. Probably that is not best.

A few weeks ago, I observed someone far less jaded by dirt than I am. Her little son was playing near the slide, which is surrounded by pea-gravel. (Which is of course a cushiony surface for play areas…) The boy started digging the rocks aside and got down to the ground underneath. The very tips of his fingers were browned by dirt and the mother came over saying “No no! Oh, now look! Now we have to go wash your hands!” And off they went, and he never came back to play.

I wonder what she would say if she saw Silas?

Pray for My Owie

This summer I have been teaching the four-six year old Sunday School class at church. Young children have very interesting perspectives on theology.

“Jesus rose from the dead ‘cause He’s magic!” (Well, no. God can do anything, but that’s not the same as magic.)

“Because Jesus is God!” Next week: “Jesus isn’t God, He’s God’s SON.” (He’s both, honey; we’ll talk about the trinity later. Like in college.)

“If there is a rainbow in heaven, will it be raining there?” (That one stumped me.)

But one thing that my class has caused me to ponder more than anything else is prayer. Each morning before anything else, I ask if anybody has anything they would like to tell us. Shannon Smith taught me to do this, and it helps to keep kids from bursting out with the exciting thing they did this week in the middle of the story. After that, I pray for our class. I had never asked for prayer requests, but one day someone just said they had one. And that first one might have been a legitimate request; I don’t remember exactly. But then everyone had one, and now every week almost everyone has one. And you know what? Most of them are for owies.

“I scratched my finger” “I have a bug bite” “My knee is scraped” “My toe got hurt”

And I began to wonder, “What is up with all the owie requests??”

I have come to the point where I take one general raise of hands for who has an owie (usually everyone), and I pray for all the children who have owies, for God to help their bodies be strong and heal the way He made them to.

I do not want to ever say that God doesn’t care about your owie, it will heal on its own, because that really isn’t true. God does care about our cares, and anything that our bodies do right is a good gift from above.

However, I continue to ponder this phenomenon of owie requests, and I have something of a hypothesis.

I remember this sort of thing happening when I was in junior church too.  The teacher often would ask for “Praises”, yet children would invariably default to giving requests. Few children could give a praise, but almost EVERYBODY could think up a request (except maybe the shy kids) even if it was just an “owie”.  I have observed this phenomenon in most groups of churched children that I have worked with, on several age levels, and in various programs.

Why do they do this?

As you well know, children learn much from what they see adults do. (Do you see where I am going with this?)

How often do kids see us adults give loads of “praises”? How often have children heard their parents pray a whole prayer in thanksgiving and not ASK God for anything?

I know for myself it is often really really hard to pray and not ask God for anything; to just praise Him for who He is and what He has done. Our God is wonderful enough to make this very easy if we focus on Him and not our own small scraps and scratches. Again, God cares for our cares, and we are told to cast them before Him, but His glory and blessings deserve at least equal time in our prayers.

I think the reflection in our children shows us as adults that praise is something we need to practice more, and to pattern and teach more. It is something I desire to learn now and remember when Silas is old enough to say “owie.”

Puddle Jumping

A post for Mom, since she can’t see the Facebook video:

Silas went out puddle jumping the other day. We got home from running errands, and since my hands were full of whatever it was we did on said errands, I just put Silas down to walk inside. Instead he wandered over to the puddles in the drive way and had a marvelous time splishing through them.

I see so many pictures that other people post of their children that are in focus with their sweet child looking at the camera. I have no idea how one accomplishes such a feat. Most of mine turn out like the picture below — stillcute, but slightly blurry because Silas is moving from where he was when the camera focused one second earlier.

In other random Silas news, Satuday we babysat a little girl from church, and naturally she played with Silas’s things while she was here. With Silas looking on, she took out and re-assembled his name puzzle (cut out wooden letters spelling his name.) When she was finished, Silas decided to try it out, and actually got most of the letters into their correct places, something he has never done before! So thanks Katherine for teaching Silas something!

Vrooom

One of the first “words” Silas learned was “vroom” for cars. So it’s not surprising that now one of his  favorite things to do is play in cars.

Not WITH cars, but rather IN cars.

Perhaps because in the truck he sits up front with me, he seems especially attracted to all the things to push and pull and twist. Thus it is that often when we turn on the truck, the brights and the left blinker are on, and the windshield wipers are going.  Yesterday, he was priviledged to “drive” John’s car (sitting in John’s lap), and Silas grabbed the keys sitting in the center console and tried to put one in the ignition!

This day, I was sitting in the truck with Silas. I had the door closed, but then opened it for something, and Silas discovered the light. You can only see a little bit of smile on his chubby cheeks (covered in mosquito bites) but the look on his face when he saw that light go on was joyous amazement! It was the greatest thing he had discovered all day!

Eventually though, one must move on and explore new things, and so Silas came to the buckles on his carseat. Buckles have always fascinated him — he is always playing with the buckles on his highchair and stroller and anything else. He actually gets in the way a lot when I am putting him in the carseat, because he wants to do it himself.

He can often clasp the chest clip together but he really is not quite strong enough yet to get the bottom part snapped in. Maybe he thought tackling the problem from a different angle would help.

Silas Gets A “New” Crib

When Silas was first born, all we had space for was a Pack ‘N’ Play. There was no room for a crib in our smallest-ever house.

But as Silas has grown, he has gotten a bit long for the Pack ‘n’ Play, and also the mattress is getting worn out. (Even though no one else seems to have this problem with their Pack ‘n’ Play mattresses. I don’t know what we did wrong…)

My grandma still had my crib at her house, and said that we could have it for Silas (no one knows why it was there and not at my parents house, not even my parents).  Before anyone reminds me of current safety standards, I am not that old. The bars on this crib are the appropriate distance apart and there is nothing Silas could strangle himself on.  Thank you for your concern.

Anyway, it took some time before we actually got a mattress for the crib, but a little while ago, Silas finally got to sleep in his new crib.

I had SUCH cute video of when we first put him in it — he loved bouncing around on the mattress, which is of course much softer than the padding-over-board “mattress” of the Pack ‘n’ Play — BUT  I got trigger-happy on my camera deleting pictures and accidentally deleted that video. :’-(

However I did sneak in during his nap and take pictures. There is nothing so sweet as a sleeping baby!

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of his little feet too.

(I love my mother, and am SO THANKFUL for everything she gives me for Silas, but do these crib sheets look girly to you? She says they do not, but I am not too sure…)

Shortly after Silas “upgraded” into a crib, I learned that two of his little friends, who are both smaller and several months younger than he is, have begun climbing out of their cribs. YIKES!

Maybe My Picky Eater Just Needs a Sombrero

Silas has entered a toddler “picky eating” stage. He has always been such a good (ravenously hungry) eater, but lately I think his nutritional needs have slowed down some. Random foods have been ending up on the floor (he has quite a good arm, actually.) Sometimes he throws foods that he likes, or at least used to like. He will eat some, throw some, eat some more. It is very confusing for me as a mommy.

Of late he has been a little extra confusing.

Last week at grandma’s house, Silas wholly rejected apples, which he has always eaten, and only ate meat and potatoes with ketchup, off of my fork. A fair amount of Cheerios were launched as well. These are All-American food basics here!

Well, today when we sat down for lunch, I was in need of a fruit/veggie to feed Silas with his PB and J. We do not always eat as healthily as I would prefer, but even I know that the thin layer of strawberry jelly in the sandwich does not count as a fruit. Unfortunately, this being Monday, I was all out of fruit. (I shop on Tuesday so sometimes by the end of the grocery-week we are out of fresh produce.)

Hmm, what else do I have that resembles edible plant life? Ah, leftover quesadilla ingredients.

Would he eat that? What with the picky-ness and all?

He did.

The child happily devoured black beans and salsa.  LOTS!

I don’t pretend to understand it, but I’m happy he ate.

Olé!

First Masterpiece

Last week I sat down my Silas and his developing little mind to paint for the first time. Outside. Because he also tends to be developing a mess at any given moment. I put an old T-shirt over his clothes because “they” never really mean it when they say “washable” paint.

He got right to work; I put some dots of paint on his paper and some he smeared with his finger, and some he actually brushed with the paint brush.

Of course he got paint on himself, which is half the fun…

… but I didn’t quite expect the paint to turn out looking like this:

Hmm.

Anyway, I was so hoping that Silas would just love painting and be super interested in it, but about half way through, love of machinery trumped the creative process.

This man came to mow the lawn, and that was much more interesting than paint dots and smudges. I got him to “finish” painting (whatever that means; mostly I guess it means he smudged all the paint dots I gave him) but really, he wanted to be watching that mower.

Here is our finished product:

After we finished, I took Silas out of the seat and left him outside while I went back and forth putting the supplies and pictures in the house. I came back out, and there he was, hands in his little pockets, just staring after the lawn mower. How cute is it that he stuffed his hands in his pockets?!

We had a great time painting though, and he didn’t make nearly as much mess as I originally thought, so I may let him paint indoors next time. We turned the picture into a birthday card for Grandpa Keith, and he loved it, and now it is on their refridgerator!

Schroeder and Monkeys

Mostly Silas only plays our keyboard when one of us is playing, which usually causes us to stop playing for lack of available keys… (Still working on the concept of “sharing.”) However, a few days ago, Silas plinked on the keyboard for a rather long time. He was “plinking” too, not smashing or banging as usual.

There was a point before this that Silas was indeed sitting just exactly like Schroeder, but of course when I grabbed the camera he ran over to see about that. He went back to playing though, varying positions a little every now and then.

It was so cute to see him interested in a “still” activity for so long. Normally he is doing this:

climbing SOMETHING. This has been a favorite climb the last few weeks. Our coffee table is behind the couch (an odd arrangement result of trying to fit my fabulous chair-and-a-half into the living room), so he climbs up on that and then over the couch back, then back around to do it over again.

My angel son ALSO discovered Saturday that by climbing a particular storage box in the kitchen he can reach the shelf where I keep my purse and the phone, and the particular incentive for doing so at that time, a sucker. (I gave the sucker away in Sunday School, so there.) He loves to climb!

Snuggles

While I was recovering last week, Enric helped out one day with Silas so I could take a much-needed nap. I heard Silas wake up from his nap, and Enric go get him, and then after a little while, it was all quiet again. I thought they must have gone outside, and I fell back asleep.

(Zzzzz.)

When I woke up later, it was still pretty quiet in the house. Hmm, must still be playing outside.

But then I came into the living room and found this:

I love my sweet family!

What Is A Chair and a Half?

For my birthday ( a smidgen late) Enric bought me a Chair-and-a-Half. Our coffee shop here has several of these in it, and you can buy one in the store next door. They are just perfect for an in-love couple such as ourselves to sit in   (with space on the ottoman for the wiggly son.)

It’s certainly the biggest birthday present I have ever gotten! It is also the only BRAND NEW piece of furniture we own! It even smells good- like the candles in the store!

Thanks, Honey! I love it