Dinnertime

Some families, when they gather for the evening meal, share intellectual discourse. Some laugh about the events of the day. Some even use it as a time to learn new things, such as a foreign language or the history of Ancient Rome.

Here's a list of things that happened at my family dinner tonight:

- Daddy let Joshua choose whether Matthew would start with his pureed pears or carrots. He chose pears, which meant Matthew did not EAT his carrots when it came time to feed them to him.

- Anna jumped up halfway through dinner, ran to the other side of the room, yelled "Look what I can do!" and proceeded to do a somersault.

- Joshua discovered that if he shut his eyes tight and swung his head back and forth, he was hilarious. At least to himself.

- Anna got down on all fours in her chair and started barking like a dog.

- Joshua began crowing like a rooster. "Cock-a-doodle-do!"

- We had an identity crisis as first Anna claimed that Daddy was Joshua, then Joshua claimed the same. It's hard to keep these things straight after all.

- Joshua flung his arm in a dramatic fashion out to the side, hit his milk, and sent it crashing to the floor. As I ran to get towels, Joshua had started to whimper when his sister came to the rescue: "Don't worry Joshua! MOMMY will clean it up!!"

- Anna ate two bites of biscuit. Joshua ate a serving of roast, a serving of peas, and two biscuits. When we tried praising Joshua in an attempt to encourage Anna to eat more, she simply joined in: "Good job, Joshua, good job!" When asked if she was going to eat any of her dinner, she paused and then responded "Ummm...no."

Perhaps the intellectual discussions will come later on.

Then again, maybe not.

What are we teaching them?

Recently, Joshua and Anna received a dollar each from their great-grandmother. Both bills are currently sitting in our change jar, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them, exactly.

The other day Joshua asked me if we could get him new sunglasses. I refuse to buy him sunglasses anywhere but the Dollar Tree - I am not spending more than a dollar on something that is going to last less than 48 hours. He loves sunglasses, takes them everywhere, wears them everywhere...and subsequently breaks them everywhere. He is harder on sunglasses than my brother Sam is on toaster ovens.

When he asked me for new sunglasses, I decided this might be a good opportunity to teach him about money and making choices. I went and pulled out his dollar bill and sat down to have a deep, one-on-one teachable moment with him. I showed him the dollar and asked him what it was. He didn't know, so I explained it was money, a one dollar bill.

"And what do you think we do with money, Joshua?" I asked.

He thought long and hard for a moment, and then answered:

"Take it to Wal-Mart?"

I admit, I started laughing so hard that we didn't get much farther in the conversation. Oh well, maybe next time!

A story about Princess Anna

Anna climbed up into my life and said, "I want you to tell me a story."

"Ok, Anna, what would you like a story about?" I replied.

"ME!" she said, clasping her hands to her heart.

"Ok then, well, Princess Anna..."

"ONCE UPON A TIME!" she corrected me passionately.

"Sorry, once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Anna, and she lived in a beautiful castle..."

Joshua chimed in at this point - "There needs to be HORSES!"

Well, of course, you can't have a princess story without horses, everyone knows this. So I added horses: "And she had a whole herd of horses of her very own. One day she and her favorite horse were riding through the forest...Anna, what should we name the horse?"

Wait for it.

"Ummm...cereal."

"Cereal? The horse's name is cereal?"

"YES!" she answered enthusiastically.

The story went on from there, involved bears and brave mice and more horses. But to me, this was the highlight of the experience. Apparently, Cereal is my daughter's favorite name. It's at least one of her favorite foods, I know that. The word seems to be appeal to her as well.

I love my kids and how their minds work.

It's BEAUTIFUL!

This morning I had to run over to our church with Matthew and Anna to grab a Bible my husband had left there over the weekend. I was trying to move fast in order to get back before he had to go to work. We ran in the building, and while hauling Matthew on one hip, I told Anna "Ok, head to the sanctuary."

"The SANCTUARY?" Anna asked excitedly. "Ok!"

We headed to the sanctuary, where I rushed in looking for the Bible. Anna, however, stopped in the middle of the room and took in a deep breath of awe.

"The SANCTUARY!" she exclaimed. "Oh, it's BEAUTIFUL!"

She walked up and down a row touching the chairs, saying, "oh, look at these chairs!" She took a moment to drink the whole room in.

Now, she was born in this church. (Well, not IN the church, but you know what I mean.) She has been here her whole life. That sanctuary is as familiar to her as her own living room. When she gets there for Sunday morning worship, she often just kicks off her shoes and starts running around. (And then she gets a time-out for running, but that's another story.) There was nothing new or breathtaking about the room. Yet when she walked in, her tiny 3-year old self was captivated by the beauty of God's house of worship.

On one hand, this is just a cute story about Anna and her drama queen-ness. These days everything is a dramatic event for Anna. She's becoming a pint-sized diva. One the other hand though, there is a deeper message for me.

Why don't I respond that way to the things of God? Why don't I walk into that sanctuary and exclaim, "oh, it's beautiful!" When was the last time I stopped to consider the greatness of what He has provided for us? This is the place I worship, where I connect with God. What is more beautiful than that? This is the place where believers gather together to marvel at God's greatness. Why don't I stop and consider the breathtaking beauty of that?

I am in our church building approximately 498 times a week. And today I realized that it has become commonplace for me. It's just, you know, the building, the sanctuary. But today I stopped and looked at it through my daughter's eyes - and, I believe, God's eyes. He doesn't see it as common and ordinary. He doesn't see it as just another room. He sees it as a gift He gave his children so they could have a place to gather and worship Him. He sees it as a precious meeting place for Him and His people. It's been anointed and set apart for a holy purpose. While it should be a comfortable, familiar place, it shouldn't be "just another room." It is a place of honor where I meet with the God of the universe.

Now, I know, I know, the Church is not a building, it's the people. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something bigger than just the four walls of the sanctuary. I'm talking about an attitude of reverence for God and those things that are of Him. My relationship with God becomes commonplace too. I can talk to Him anytime about anything, so you know, it's just God, we're good and all. Nothing special. Nothing special?! The God that created aardvarks and sodium and Pluto and the electron and stardust wants to have a relationship with ME. How can I treat that as something ordinary? How can I just run in and out of it, grab what I need, whatever I forgot over the weekend, and run back out to the next thing? When was the last time I stopped and looked at Him for who He is as well as those things that are important to Him and said, "oh, it's beautiful!" I run from place to place just expecting God will be there, and He will be - but I don't want to treat Him and commonplace any more that I want to treat His ways, His power, His gifts, and yes, even His house of worship as commonplace. He deserves so much more than that, and I was created to worship and revere Him, not brush Him aside.

Today my daughter taught me a lesson in how I see and treat the things of God. She sees wonder and delight where I see commonplace. I want my perspective to be more like hers. This is surely a piece of what Jesus said when He said to have faith like a child. May we all hold a child's sense of wonder and beauty close to our hearts and see those things that are precious to Him as precious to us.

A Tree?

Tonight at Church, Anna was sitting on my lap while I ran the overhead projector. The background to our lyric slides is a big cross. (The default background to Open Song, for anyone who is familiar with the program.)

As she sat on my lap, she pointed to the computer screen and said, "What's that?"

"That?" I answered. "That's a cross."

"Is it a tree?"

"No, Anna, it's a cross."

"A tree?"

"No, a cross. Jesus died on the cross." I paused for a moment here, hoping that would kick her memory into gear, perhaps even paving the way for a deep, theological discussion, three-year-old style.

She paused too, thereby igniting my hope that she was pondering the deeper meaning of the cross. Then:

"It's a tree?"

Hope thwarted.

"No, Anna, just a cross."

"Can you get a tree?"

"Nope, can't get a tree, sorry."

"Ok, Mommy."

At this, she slid down my lap and ran out to the sanctuary to worship with her father...or maybe to see if she could con a tree out of him, for all I know. (All she has to do is bat her big blue eyes at her daddy and say "I wuv you, Daddy!" and he will pretty much do whatever she wants. If I ever come home to a pony tied up in the front yard, this will be the reason.)

So, no deep heart-to-heart with Mommy tonight. Maybe next week we can talk about bushes. Perhaps that will lead to something more....Moses and the burning bush, anyone?

Does It Count?

Yesterday Joshua ran passed Anna and slapped her on the arm. She of course protested with loud tears.

However, upon questioning, Joshua's defense was "I didn't hit her! I gave her a high five!"

So this begs the question - if the other person doesn't know it's a high five, does it still count for one, or does it qualify as a hit?

Jury's still out.

Justice Served?

Every afternoon, we observe a special time in our house known as "quiet time." The alternate name of this time is called "everyone aged 2-4 in this house needs to go spend an hour in their room before Mommy pulls out all her hair." It is what we do in place of naptime for the two older ones as naptime leads to late sleep time at night. (Not late bedtime. Bedtime stays the same, but if Joshua and Anna take naps earlier in the day, they won't fall asleep till 11:00 pm or later, no matter what time they go to bed.) The time is to be spent playing quietly in their room, but "quietly" is a loose term. Before long, frustrated screams will emit from the room, and wails of "She took my toy!" "He hit me!" "I HAD THAT FIRST! MOMMY!" will hang in the air. But for one hour, I invoke what I like to call "Mom's Selective Hearing." Unless the screams communicate that blood has been drawn, I just choose not to hear. For one hour, they can settle their own disputes.

Unless, of course, they come out of the room.

As I was sitting at the dining room table trying to eat my lunch in quasi-peace, Anna came flying out the room, red-faced with tears of injustice streaming down her face. "JOSHUA HIT ME!"

Now, the thing is, I had not heard anything preceding Anna's arrival at the table, which immediately made me a tad suspicious. But now that she was standing in front of me, I had to step into my judge-and-jury role.

"Joshua! What happened! Why is Anna crying?"

Silence.

"Joshua! Did you hit Anna!"

Continued silence. This did not help Joshua's case, and Anna's suddenly took on some credence.

"JOSHUA! COME HERE PLEASE!"

"I'M BUILDING A TOWER ON THE FLOOR!"

Finally! A response! Oddly enough, though, not quite the one I was looking for.

"Joshua, please come here and tell me what happened!"

Joshua came out into the living room with his best indignantly-oppressed-artist face on. After all, I had interrupted a masterpiece in progress to attend to something as trivial as his sister's feelings, both physical and emotional. Couldn't I see there were more important matters at hand, like Legos?

"Joshua, did you hit Anna?"

"I'm building a tower!"

Not helping your case, kiddo...

"That's not what I asked. Did you hit Anna?"

"I'm BUILDING A TOWER!"

Clearly we were not communicating.

"Joshua, yes or no. Did you hit Anna?"

"No."

A curve ball! I was expecting a confession; when pressed, he is usually pretty good about 'fessing up. Hmmm.

"Then why does she think so?"

"Ummmm, well, ummm, I said I was sorry."

Interesting. The plot thickens.

"So did you hit her?"

"No!"

"Then what did you say you were sorry for?"

"Well...I did."

Not sure at this point if the "I did" refers to the hitting or the apology, I turned to Anna to see how she was taking all of this. Her attention had wandered and she was checking out something behind her. It was obvious that whatever had happened had already passed from her small, 3-year old memory and was a thing of the past.

Shaking my head, I said, "Ok, was it an accident?"

"Yes!" declared my little suspect, eager to move on.

"Ok, and you said you were sorry?"

"Yes!!!"

"Ok, Anna, it was an accident, everyone go back to quiet time."

"Ok Mommy!" they both exclaimed, and they scurried back to their room.

I am still not sure exactly what happened, and like the Mystery of the Pink Face, I likely never will...but I figure if everyone is happy once more, justice has been served as far as it can be at this point. So I'll just do the best I can - and maybe get to finish my lunch in the process.

But it sounds like I will have to hurry, because there goes Matthew...