kid-speak

I was working with Diva this morning on her new AWANA verse.  She was SUPPOSED to say "all He had made was very good" (Gen 1:31).  Her version, which I have to admit, had quite a bit of merit to it, was "all He had made was very important!".

She brought another smile to my face earlier this morning, too.  I'm learning to be more spontaneous with her and go with her ideas instead of brushing them off just because I don't feel like doing it right then.  She came up to me this morning while I was feeding Bubba and said "I want to send a Happy Mother's Day card to your mommy."  Her children's church class had made Mother's Day cards back in the spring when it actually WAS Mother's Day and apparently that was a big deal to her.  Every now and then she'll bring up the subject totally out of the blue.  I really didn't feel like putting forth much effort on anything extra today and could have produced any number of excuses to validate a "no" answer (headache, tired, etc.).  I thought about it for a minute and then figured that Grandma would probably enjoy it, so I told her to go ahead and get a piece of paper and make a "card" for Grandma.  She did that while I finished feeding Bubba, then we got an envelope for her to stuff the paper into, and I do mean stuff - she didn't do the greatest folding job on the paper :-)  I addressed it and put the stamp on, then let her trot out to the mailbox and put it in.  It didn't take a whole lot of extra effort on my part but it meant something to her and I'm sure it will make Grandma smile when it reaches it's destination.  I still have my moments when I just can't motivate myself to either stop what I'm working on or put forth the effort to humor all of her little impulses, but I am learning to put my own things and my own feelings aside more often and listen to the thoughts of a child.

"And a little child shall lead them"  Isaiah 11:6

memory making moments

Sometimes it's just fun to be a little spontaneous.  Besides, who knows what blog fodder the girls will give me. :-)  Tonight I decided that the girls and I were going to have a "pajama party".  There was no occasion, no special reason - it's not even the weekend.  I just felt like doing something out of the ordinary.  Around 5:30 we got cleaned up and ready for bed, all three of us in our pj's.  After that, I put the girls in their room with some toys they don't play with very often and I started making "pancake cookies" for our dinner.  Pancake cookies are just small, cookie-sized pancakes that can be snacked on like cookies and don't have to be eaten at the table.  When I had enough made to get them going, I had them pick up the toys then come out to the couch.  They got to watch an Elmo movie while they ate their dinner.  

By the time we were done with that, it was almost dark.  Since one of the parts of the Elmo movie was talking about stars and constellations, we went outside to watch the stars come out.  Imp had given up and gone back inside with Daddy, but Diva and I stayed out for a little while.  At one point, I decided to have a "teaching moment" and asked her if she knew what the time of day when it wasn't quite all the way dark, but it wasn't daytime anymore was called.  She said "yes", so I asked what it was.  She replied, "the big difference!"  I was going for dusk, but that works. :-)  I think she meant to say "the Big Dipper" because we had been talking about that particular constellation.  Oh well, she gave me my laugh for the day.

too smart for her own good

On the way home from AWANA, I was talking with Diva about her night. I asked her if she enjoyed "circle time". She said "Yes, but it was an oval". She's 3! How does she even realize that?

We must be doing something right . . .

This morning I decided to do something new with the girls and made them puppets out of brown paper lunch bags. Diva took two of them, declaring one to be the Daddy puppet and one to be the Mommy puppet. She then had one of them say "I love you so much!" and put them together like they were kissing. I just had to laugh. I guess if that's her perception of Mommy and Daddy we must be doing something right.

Monkey math

The girls love bananas - so much so that they usually share one every morning. Usually I have Diva get the banana then give Imp half. The two halves normally look about the same size, so I had been impressed with how fair Diva was being - until I noticed that Diva's half tended to have a bite out of it already. She has been taking a bite or two of the banana before splitting it "evenly" between the two of them.

Good clean fun

I accidentally discovered a new toy tonight, much to the delight of Imp. The girls were playing with the squirt guns again, but Diva had the upper hand. She has more patience than Imp to let the water gun fill in the bin of water before she tries to use it. Since I had just emptied a large bottle of dishsoap into the smaller one that I keep at the sink, I decided to give Imp the advantage by filling the bottle with water so she could squirt it at her big sister. Because there was still soap in the bottle, by the time the bottle was half full of water, the other half was full of soap suds. I figured that was enough water to get her started and took the bottle outside. When I squeezed the bottle, the first thing I got was a huge spray of thousands of tiny bubbles. Imp's eyes lit up like she had just seen the most wonderful thing in the world. Did I mention that Imp has an obsession with bubbles? This was like Christmas for her. The best part - shake the bottle and it's ready to go again. They both got totally soaked, but they thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Never trust a kid with a water gun

The weather today has been absolutely gorgeous, and since Daddy fixed the gate on our porch yesterday, I let the girls play outside a lot today. Today seemed like the perfect day to re-introduce a toy from the beginning of the summer - the water guns. I took the water guns out and a rubbermaid shoebox container of water for refills. Just a little bit ago, I took out a pitcher of water to refill their water supply in hopes of keeping them entertained until dinner. I squirted a few rounds with them and as I was heading inside, Diva says "Wait a minute". I stopped at the door and asked what she wanted. "I want to give you something", she said. Foolishly, I trusted her. I should have known by the sparkle in her eye that she was up to no good. The "something" that she wanted to give me was one last good squirt from her water gun.