From the Mouths of Babes

We have officially reached the stage of parenthood where you are always on guard in public and living in fear of what your 3 year-old might say to other people. Every little old lady has a story about the time her son or daughter told the person in front of them at the grocery store that he or she is fat or smells bad. I don't know, this stage really snuck up on me. We were walking through the Craftsman section at Sears the other day and a group of men were assembling a large thingamajig and one of them happened to be black. As soon as I heard the words "Look at that man!" escape Jacob's mouth I began pleading with God for the comment to end there. But alas, it did not. Luckily all he said was "He has no hair!" and everyone laughed and the man was very gracious with us as we looked for the nearest exit but he has said worse before. He yelled "That man is brown!" once when we were out but I don't think the man heard.

He has said some really sweet things lately. We have been talking about Moses over breakfast for the past month or so and I wasn't really sure how much was sticking in his mind. This morning he brought his Little People Noah's Ark into the bath and the ark happened to also contain the Little People Christmas Nativity set. All three kids were happily splashing and playing amidst pairs of giraffes, lions, parrots and zebras along with the magi, Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus, who happens to be in a manger, like so.He looked down and said "Mom, it's Baby Moses floating to the princess!" It is such a blessing to me to hear him talking about God's Word and to know he's thinking about such things. He loves to read books and pretend he is one the of characters right now. One of his favorites is by Sheila Walsh called "Will, God's Mighty Warrior." The main character Will has a baby sister Lola and a best friend Josh so you can imagine the talks I've gotten recently. "Mom! I'm not Jacob and they aren't Danny or Libby. She's baby Lola and he's Josh. I'm Will." That's a normal day lately but today he was really caught up on Moses and started carrying around bundles of blankets saying that he had Baby Moses and he was sleeping so we needed to be quiet. So Dan picked up a bundle and, not to be outdone, was carrying around Baby Jesus. What do you say to that?

Anyway, we took a big step and bought Jake his first real bicycle with training wheels. He had no intention of leaving the store without a helmet so we decided we really do care about his head enough to shell out $14 for a helmet. I felt so bad for little Dan having to watch Jake get this shiny, new bike for no reason knowing that he would rarely get to use it until it was old and dirty and Jake got another big shiny, new bike so we bought him a new "big boy" car seat. A little lackluster huh? Hey, he was excited and he wanted the one that is exactly the same as Jake's too. Jake has shared the bike a bit but it's really hard to ride it when you can't reach the pedals.

Both of my children have this strange interest in safety because Dan also feels the helmet to be imperative to the mission of sitting on a bike and going no where but oh well. Libby just cruises around and watches the fun. Pretty much the sweetest baby ever! Jake was content to just water our little "garden" today. You might want your sunglasses before looking at the picture of him though...I posted back in October about going to the pumpkin patch. We came home with two little pumpkins that were subsequently tossed around the front yard until they broke. I threw one, whose name was Mr. Pumpkin courtesy of Jacob, in the flower bed out of laziness and now we have our own little pumpkin patch coming up.

We also planted a bunch of seeds and pretended like we are gardeners for an afternoon and the only thing that has grown from that effort is this mystery vegetable. We planted so many different kinds of seeds, you gotta diversify because surely you can't be terrible at growing everything, that we don't remember what this is. Any ideas as to the identity of our mystery vegetable?

Emily (Emmy), Libby and I fly out Thursday for DFW and then we'll be whisked away to Colorado City for the weekend. We are so ready to be home for a while but I have to admit, I'm always a little (a lot) apprehensive about taking children on planes. It leaves you thinking things like "How much Benadryl can you give a 1 year-old without doing any permanent damage?"

Well, it's getting late, I'm tired. Sorry for the lack of writing but it's been busy and it's getting busier. I despise having to choose between acceptable levels of filth in the house or time with the children but that is where we have been lately. Emily cleaned out our entire refrigerator today because it was a little, well, very filthy. God is so good to have sent her to us...