Moments matter

There was no single “blog moment” yesterday, primarily because it was one of those days filled with small delights.  It wasn’t that nobody whined and everyone ate meals without complaints or food-throwing, it was just that I took my own advice and decided to answer the small, everyday transgressions with a song instead of a stout voice.

It may help that I’m spending two weeks on the parable of the prodigal son with my daughters.  We’d been having some problems with petty squabbles and resentments, so it seemed like it might be helpful to spend a little extra time talking about Christ’s infinite mercy, and the joy we should feel when someone seeks to atone for wrongs committed.  This took on a little extra poignancy over the weekend, when I received the news that my estranged aunt is dying from stage four lung cancer with brain metastases.  Tidings like those tend to make all the reasons I find to hold onto anger and grudges seem even more foolish than they usually do.

We were talking today about how the father in the parable greeted his returning son with great joy, and threw a party to celebrate his safe return — and his change of heart.  The task of showing them that remorse isn’t just mouthing a few syllables, but an actual change of heart, will continue for many years, but it made a big impression on the girls that the son was reduced to wishing he could eat the pigs’ food.  There are opportunities for lessons in stewardship here, too. It’s such a great parable for teaching so many foundational concepts that I’m beginning to think we may have to return to it every six months or so, as they grow and mature and the boys start to join in the actual instruction.

This is Beanie’s newest workbook.  For weeks, I have struggled to find a way around her mulish resistance to coloring her assigned coloring pages.  We are talking about a girl who colored every single page in a 288 page Hello Kitty coloring book in a single day (and colored them well, I might add) when left to her own devices, but flatly refuses to complete a single assigned age of coloring.  Saying this is frustrating would be a grievous understatement.  At any rate, I remembered that the only thing Beanie loves more than coloring is stickers, and happened upon this book in our little stockpile.  Since she is still working on some of the basic skills, she and I made a deal — if she colors her assigned pages within a reasonable amount of time (say, 30 minutes), she gets to do ONE page in this book.  I let her do a page today just so she could see how much she would enjoy it, and immediately found myself with a lap-full of not quite four  year old jubilantly exclaiming, “Mommy that is the best schoolbook ever can I have ‘nother page I really like the stickers and did you see it was three different fishies and one of them was yellow and yellow is my favorite color . . .”

If you’ve ever read Roger Hargreaves’ Little Miss Chatterbox, you have read a reasonably accurate description of an excited Beanie.  Hopefully, this will result in less mayhem at lesson time tomorrow.

Later in the day, while Mr. Man and Baby Guy were napping, Beanie had wandered off to see if she could build a cave for her Care Bears with her Lincoln Logs, and Bugaboo was slumped on the couch, pouting a little because I would not let her go back outside to play until her brothers awoke.  Wanting to avoid a mutiny that would wake the wee guys anyway, I asked her if she would like to do a craft.  Thanks to Grandma, we have a ridiculously large supply of foam craft kits in the house, and Bugaboo loves to assemble the little projects.  For the record, glue dots are the greatest innovation in the history of children’s crafts.  Thoughtful girl that she is, she decided not to use the magnets that came with the kit; after scrutinizing their size, she advised me, “No, Mommy, I don’t think those magnets are a good idea.  Mr. Man likes to pick those off, and they look small enough for Baby Guy to swallow.  Can we save them for something we’re going to give to Grandma or Grandpa?  I want to keep these to play with my Strawberry Shortcakes.”

Not long after Bugaboo finished her project, Beanie ambled out of the girls’ room, having tired of both solitude and Lincoln Logs, and decided to brush Smudgie and read a couple of board books on the couch.  I love that she reads to Smudgie.  Bugaboo disappeared and, after a quick stop to make sure she hadn’t fallen into the commode again, I poked my head into the girls’ room to  see if she was, perhaps, napping, as the house was unnervingly quiet, even taking into account the sleeping boys.  There sat our oldest daughter, playing with her sister’s dinosaurs and her own Strawberry Shortcake cafe, pretending a family of giant lizards had dropped by for cakes and milkshakes.  I believe Orange Blossom (bottom left) probably fainted from fright.

After a dinner that actually was eaten without any complaints about the quality, quantity, or preparation of the food, the three ambulatory members of the tribe skittered back out into the yard to run off their meal and desserts.  Baby Guy decided to check out the toys that reside in the bottom of the entertainment center, and happened upon the toy that has been all four of their favorite at the age of ten months –the animal wheel.  He was smiling and laughing, spinning the wheel as fast as it would go, then stopping it himself to see what animal noise would issue forth, even trying to imitate some of them. While his siblings were exploring a world with broader boundaries than his, he seized the opportunity to investigate the possibilities of one single toy, without worrying that anyone would try to “help” him with it.  He passed a very giggly half hour indeed, and I laughed right along with him — and imitated the animal sounds, too.  The Lord God made them all, you know, and it’s fun to spend a little time appreciating His handiwork with a baby.

When the animal wheel lost its allure, he crawled across the living room and checked out Beanie’s drum and its stick.  It did not take Baby Guy long to determine that the sounds the stick made when rapped smartly against the wood floor or pounded against the couch were significantly more interesting than the noise produced by hitting the drum. Another half hour passed while I watched our youngest son explore how many sounds he could make, by himself, with a wooden stick.

Around the time Baby Guy tired of experimenting with the drum stick, Mr. Man wandered in with his newest rock.  I believe I’ve mentioned before that he loves rocks, and can be counted upon to bring me several specimens whenever he ventures into the yard.  After I captured him and his treasure on camera, he proceeded to show Baby Guy that you can make even MORE noises by banging rocks on things than you can by banging a stick on things.  Some of those noises come from Mommy, who is several feet away from the rock in question.  The boys found this pastime particularly hilarious.

In the meantime, the girls were busily swinging and singing, “One, two, buckle my shoe” at the tops of their lungs.

In the midst of the rock-banging and counting song-singing, my husband came home.  We changed the boys into their pajamas and settled in for prayers and lullabyes.  It’s rare that I’m able to get a shot of all five of my brightest blessings together.  From left to right:  Mr. Man, Beanie, Daddy, Baby Guy, and Bugaboo.

We had a full and wonderful day.  Smudgie, however, was exhausted from running to and fro, watching over and playing with all his tiny people.

Today’s prayer:  Lord, thank You for a day of simple pleasures with Your blessings.  Thank You for the grace of a heart open to wonder and arms open to comfort.  Your Scripture warns us of times when people will turn their face from You and become “lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, irreligious (2 Tim 2),” and we would raise Your blessings to honor You above all things, to praise You for your glory and the beauty of Your creation always.  Please grant us the grace to teach them to delight in every small moment of joy, for every second in which we are happy in Your love and each other’s company, and teach us to pray for those whose hearts are hardened against an appreciation of Your people, Your law, and Your works.