A child's observations

When you live in the boonies and have a family with entirely too many extracurricular activities and outside commitments in locations spanning three counties, you spend a LOT of time in the car.  I think I promised myself during my single years when I had time to read books by James Dobson and Kevin Lehman that I would take their advice and NEVER allow our children to take on more than one activity at a time per person...OOPS!  While I do not enjoy paying our gasoline and automobile bills, I do cherish the time in the car with our kids.  While driving from place to place, we listen to books on tape, sermons, and memory work or rehearse songs for our daughter's next musical.  In addition to listening, we also have some very good talks.  While I'm focused on the road, the kids stare out the windows and tell me all about the world around us as they see it.   Some of the observations my 5-year old has shared with me over the past two days during our commutes include:

• "Wow!  That car will get a speeding ticket for sure!" 

• "Now that car really needs to get moving because the light has been green for like three minutes or something." 

• "He really needs to fix up his yard." 

• "Will they ever fix that truck?  They've had that rear tire up on jacks forever."  

• "Check out those cool straight line clouds in the sky, Mom.  I see at least four of them.  Wait a minute....there's a jet up there making all those cool clouds." 

• "Hey, Mom!  That car looks just like Dad's except it has wings (aka, a spoiler) on the back." 

• Upon seeing a large industrial crane today, he pointed to it and said, "Look, Mom, my friend Tyler has one of those!"

• "Mom, I thought you said you would never EVER shop here again!" (as I pulled into the Walmart parking lot)

• While riding in the car with the new pillow Nana gave him, he snuggled up against it and said, "I really like this pillow because whenever I sniff it, I smell Nana."

The pillows that smell like Nana & look like alien hats

After some confusion over some Facebook posts in which friends refer to their parents by their first names, I asked my husband if it is more common now for adults to call their parents by their first names.  Overhearing me, my 5-year old then immediately called me by first name with a jesting twinkle in his eyes as if I had just given him permission.  My observant boy never misses an opportunity to tease me.

Even though we earnestly want our children to learn to respect their elders, obey us, and be good stewards out of love instead of fear, I became so frustrated with the constant need to purge my daughter's room of needless junk that I let her watch the first episode of Hoarders to show her how bad her room could become without regular cleaning.  My desperate attempt has been working.....like a charm!  Today, while we were out and about, she saw a car crammed full with junk with only a narrow space cleared out in front of the steering wheel where the driver sat.  So our daughter cried out, "Look! That driver is hoardering!"

Some of the kids' observations make them sound wise beyond their years.  For example, this past week my 5-year old, while danging from my neck, squeezed my neck so hard that I begged him to stop because it hurt.  He replied, "Love hurts, Mom".

In addition to making his own observations, my son also leads me to make some observations of my own.  Last night, he asked me, "When I was in your belly before I was born, did I eat what you ate?"  So I explained how God marvelously designed the mother's body to filter out all the nutrients the baby needs from the food she eats, and then those nutrients get transferred to the baby through the umbilical cord.  The mother's body naturally puts the baby's needs before her own during pregnancy and nursing, so the baby gets the best of all the mother eats. This design by God clearly shows how much he values the life of the unborn child. 

January is Sanctity of Human life Month, and Obama observed the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by defending Roe v. Wade as a way for "our daughters" to have the same chance as "our sons" to fulfill their dreams. (Read more here.)  He spoke without considering the great potential and lofty dreams that the unborn son or daughter might have. 

The world mourned the loss of Steve Jobs who revolutionized technology. Steve Jobs was given a chance to pursue his hopes and dreams because his birth mother chose to give him life (abortion was illegal at the time) and then place him for adoption.  I have also had tremendous opportunities in life enriched with blessings and eternal fruit because my birth mother chose to give me life (only a few months after Roe v. Wade) and place me for adoption. If God so clearly values the life of the unborn, why does our nation still so passionately defend those organizations like Planned Parenthood which deceive desperate young women in crisis into believing that the nine months of inconvenience involved during pregnancy and delivery (plus any short term emotional issues that follow) in the case of adoption would be worse than abortion (a brutal, murderous act which has been shown via ultrasound to cause excruciating pain to the unborn baby) and the lifelong emotional pain and physical problems that often result from having an abortion?
 
Oops...soapbox moment.


I'll close by noting that our 5-year old, whom we sometimes refer to as "Echo", loves to repeat information he has heard.  After church on Sunday, he ran up to me and said, "Mom, did you know that Hardees makes their biscuits fresh every day?  And did you know that when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the firey furnace, not a hair on their heads was singed..only the ropes were burned...and did you know that a 4th person, JESUS, was in the fire with them?" 

I just love his enthusiasm.