Our Family

Our Family

Monday, February 1, 2010

The Stand Off

Halie, seated at her seat at the dinner table. Mom, seated in her seat at the dinner table. A nice meal of halibut sits in front of mom and dad. Out of a kind spirit mom prepares a special kid friendly meal for Halie, a tortilla, smeared in peanut butter, cut up into spirals and pierced with a decorative toothpick and a small cup of kids yogurt. Halie, in her seat, refuses to eat her meal, mom in her seat is really starting to loose her patience with this kid who makes every meal a BATTLE! So, the stakes were set high tonight. If Halie did not finish the special meal mom made just for her, from here on out she would be eating fish with mom and dad, or enchiladas, or whatever else it is that she does not want to eat. 1 1/2 hours later.......she ate her dinner and then had the guts to ask if she could have anything else to eat, meaning dessert. Hmmm, I wonder if she got dessert.....

That leads into my memory verse for the week. Ephesians 4:2 "be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love". Do you really think He meant my 4 yr old when He wrote that??? Me too, I think he did. Nothing like a little practical application to what you are learning about.

She can be a sweet heart most of the time and sometimes she just blows me away by the things she can process and think through, she is very analytical, like her dad, and I am glad for that, but sometimes she really stumps me. I have had to pray for discernment in things I talk to her about, because she is asking some very deep, well thought out questions, but there are just somethings that a 4 yr old doesn't need to worry about yet. We talk about God and Jesus alot, but also, as I have been talking with her, I feel for her to really understand what Jesus did for her, she has to know what He saved her from as well. Well, that lead to the topic of hell and satan. I really didn't want to get into too much detail, because satan is scary and we can talk more about that when she is older. But, of course, she has lots of questions. The most recent one has been if Satan can be invisible and could he come to our house? I'm not sure, but I imagine he probably can be and could if he wanted to. I didn't tell her that, just told her that God would keep her safe. She has asked about it a few more times and gotten the same answer each time. Then yesterday she came out of her room with one bike glove on a hand and wanted to wear it to church. I told her she looked like a singer named Michael Jackson that used to be alive. She immediately processed the comment and asked if he knew God. Quite the little thinker she is. We have recently started giving her an allowance for chores she does each day. She gets a nickle for each chore and gets her money at the end of the week. She usually gets about 80cents - 1 dollar. We have 3 piggy banks that she splits her money up into each week. Church, Savings and Spending. She wants to buy a 3 musketeers barbie doll, so I told her we could count up her money and see how much they cost and if she had enough she could buy it with her spending money. She then said she wanted to by 2 dolls and told her she could buy one and then save more money for the other one. She immediately looked at the piggy banks and said, "what about my savings money, why can't i use that??" The kid doesn't just take what you tell her, she listens, and then forms her own opinions and plan. I love it and don't love it all at the same time!

Austin has become quite the little brother recently. I think little boys are born with the need to bother their sisters. He has started coming up to her, grabbing whatever she has and running away with a huge smile on his face as she chases him She is not usually as pleased as he is! Today I cleaned the house, it looked so nice.....for about 1 hr. Austin woke up from his nap and started to empty out anything and everything that he could. He would find a drawer, a basket, his kitchen, whatever and just start throwing out everything that was in it and then move onto the next thing. He is lucky he is so cute..... He has recently started saying Halie's name, it's so cute. He loves her so much. It's so fun to see them starting to play together a little bit more now.

Ok, I've got some decluttering to go do around the house. I've started this "cleaning program" if you will, called Flylady.net. It is great, doesn't take much time and my house is starting to be much cleaner and more organized than ever before. As weird as this sounds, it is almost empowering to feel like you have some control over your house!! And with that I will go spend my 15 minutes decluttering something, a drawer in my kitchen i think!!!

1 comment:

  1. Love it! These two kiddos sounds a lot like their two cousins at my house. Richard LOVES to take Samantha's things and run-right now she can catch him, but pretty soon it will be a different story.

    ReplyDelete