Silly

This morning I recieved the following email from our six year old:

Papa signed up. I am telling you that Papa signed up for a test about being silly. This is for you, Mommy. Guess what, Mommy. It's six long. Two classes for six. We both get halves.

Love,
Josiah

Here is Al's explanation:

(Josiah says I need to take a class to learn how to be silly. He and you will teach me how to tickle. My first class is 8:00 on Sunday).

I love the way kids think!

Hopes Dashed?

I had hoped that we could raise both of our kids without either of them breaking any bones. On Wednesday, my hopes we dashed. While I was in the shower (of all places!) Elijah pulled the sofa table over and broke his foot. After hearing Elijah's cries I quickly dried off while asking Josiah to check on Elijah and tell me why he was crying. After a couple of seconds Josiah yelled, "Oh oh! The table is knocked over!" I put on a robe and ran downstairs as fast as I could.

Elijah was sitting on the floor, wailing, a couple of feet from the sofa table which was on its side. I, astute observer that I am, quickly deduced that he had pulled the table and hurt himself. I immediately pulled Elijah into my lap, comforting him while checking for injuries. His left foot was slightly swelled and had bruise across the top. Elijah stopped crying after a couple of minutes and tried to toddle off, but he fell down crying when he put weight on his foot.

I brought Elijah upstairs and convinced Josiah to get dressed. I called our pediatrician and they said to bring Elijah straight to the ER. So I bundled the kids up and drove to the ER where we spent the remainder of the morning. Both kids were remarkably well behaved. Elijah stopped crying in the car and was content to sit in his stroller and look at books. Josiah read books, colored and said things to cheer me up. At one point Josiah said that he had stubbed his toe and then told the nurse, "Don't worry. I don't need first aid." They were able to x-ray Elijah's foot without taking him out of the stroller. After more waiting the doctor confirmed that Elijah's foot was fractured and he would need a cast.

I took Elijah to the orthopaedist and they put a little, light blue cast on Elijah's foot. The fracture is in a good place (not a growth plate) and should heal in approximately four weeks. I the cast might slow Elijah down for a couple of weeks, but he's already figured out how to get around with the cast. He's also learning how to use the cast as a weapon (Al said Elijah kicked him this afternoon).

After getting home from the hospital, I immediately set my alarm clock for 6:40 (half an hour before the kids usually wake up) in an attempt to avoid similar situations in the future. Today Elijah woke up at 6:20 a.m. Go figure.

So we can cross broken bones off the list of things I hope to avoid. The longer I live, the more things I have to cross of this list. The interesting thing is, the more the things I fear happen,
the more I learn that God is able to help us through any and every situation. As I reflected back on the day Wednesday evening, I realized that I experienced God most that day while taking care of Elijah and his foot. I know that God is with me always, but I am most aware of his presence when I am in need. My hopes to avoid any broken bones was dashed, but God, my true hope, will never fail.

We Are One!

Last night I was talking with Al about our Valentine's Day plans. I was asking if I should tell him my plans or if he wanted it to be a surprise. "Oh," he says, "Well, I have plans too. Is your plan something we could schedule, like I do mine and then you do yours or something." Since my plan wasn't really easy to schedule I decided to simply tell him.

"I'm borrowing a friend's fondue set and thought we could wait to eat dinner until after the kids are in bed. Is that okay?" He looked at me kind of funny. "Won't that work with your plan?" I asked. He hemmed and hawed for a few minutes and eventually left. He came back with a large gift bag.

"Oh no!" I cried. "You got me a fondue set?!" I opened the gift and he had indeed got me a Hershey's fondue set with a bag of chocolate. "I even have a little list of all the foods I was going to buy to go with this; large marshmallows, pound cake, angel food cake..." I pulled a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket, "You mean something like this?" My list of supplies was very similar to his.

What can I say, after ten years of marriage we really are one! And this isn't the first time something like this has happened. We both got each other the same card on our first wedding anniversary.

Elijah's Favorite Activities

Elijah loves videos! He is particularly fond of Blue's Clues, The Wiggles and one particular episode of Barney. His favorite activity with the videos is watching them. He is fully capable of finding a video, putting it into the TV/VCR, stopping, rewinding, fast-forwarding and ejecting videos. His second favorite activity (or perhaps a frustrating by-product of his favorite) is pulling the videos off the shelf, out of their cases and onto the floor.

Another of Elijah's favorite activities is pulling toys out of the toy bin and pushing them into the space under the piano keyboard. If we want to play the piano at our house, we first have to kick all of the toys out of the way (or, if we're really energetic, put them back into the toy bins). The other day I spent 20 minutes putting all of the toys back into their bins. Then, while I was making lunch, Elijah emptied all of the toys right back under the piano.

And finally, Elijah has taken to throwing his plate of food across the kitchen when he doesn't like something or is finished eating. This frustrates Al even more than it does me (wasting food is worse than making a mess to him).

Some days I am incredibly frustrated by Elijah's seeming to desire to make large messes. I am not fond of putting 30 videos back into their cases and onto the shelves and am even less fond of sorting toys into bins and wiping spaghetti sauce off the floor. And doing any of these two or three times a day can be close to torture. On other days I am too preoccupied to take much notice. I end up cleaning the messes either way (which is not to say that Al doesn't clean up messes too, just that I clean up the messes Elijah makes while I'm watching him).

On good days, I am able to focus on Elijah enough so that he is occupied with more useful tasks like putting together puzzles, identifying words and objects or pretending to cook. I wish I had the time and energy to focus on Elijah all of the time, but that simply isn't possible. There are meals to cook, floors to clean and other people in my family who need me. Actually, I'm thankful that Elijah is able to play on his own and doesn't demand constant attention. Now, if I can just encourage him to clean up the house instead of making messes... hmmm, I suspect that won't be happening any time soon though.