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JDaniel4s Mom

growing & learning with him

Remote Control Sing-Along

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One day last week I decided that JDaniel and his friend Bryce would use one of the remote controls for a singing game with me instead of dumping out all the toys to create a store. They seemed excited about the opportunity to play a new game.

How do you play?

The person holding the remote control calls out a song and clicks the remote. Everyone playing the game has to sing that song until another song is called out and the remote is clicked.

Here is an example:

Me:

The song is Jesus Love Me. (Click)

Everyone:

Jesus loves me! this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong;
they are weak but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.


Me:

The song is Your Are My Sunshine. (click)

Everyone:

You Are My Sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away

The game is simple, silly and fun. JDaniel and Bryce ( The boy next door) loved it when it was their turn to control the remote.

I hope you will try this game out and let me know how it plays at your house.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

Quarters Not Needed Let’s Pretend

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Have you seen these mechanical toys at your local big box store or shopping center? They can cost as little as fifty cents or tons more depending on where they are located.

JDaniel first encountered a cluster of vehicles at my mother in-law’s local mall. He asked if he could ride in a sports car and I put the money in the slot. The car started rocking back and forth and making revving sounds. Needless to say he didn’t stay in it long. “Help!” he cried with his arms over his head.

That first encounter occurred when he was just about two. It seemed to scar as well as scare him.

When we went back to that mall later, he just wanted to sit in each of the vehicles in make his own sounds. While in the fire truck, he made a siren sound. He made his own revving sound for the sports car. The school bus was silent as he sat in it. I guess he couldn’t think of a noise that it would make.

Over time we have come across other mechanical toys and he continued to just wanted to sit in them. I love that he didn’t need me to pay for the ride and he loved that it didn’t move.

We stopped at the outlet mall in Gaffney, North Carolina a few weeks ago to get school clothes and JDaniel saw this bull. He asked if I would help him up and I did. He asked if he could really ride it and I put in two quarters. The bull slowly rocked forwards and backwards. He didn’t make noise. He just rocked. JDaniel loved this bull. He was so tame and so unlike what a bucking bull in a rodeo might be like. He was perfect.

When the ride ended , Jdaniel asked if I would let him stay on him for awhile. I said that he could, but that I wasn’t going to pay for another ride. “That is okay mama,” he said, “ This time I will just pretend.”

His words made my heat melt. I bet he had as much fun pretending to ride as he did really riding.

On our way to the car JDaniel saw a fire truck with Bert and Ernie in it. Once again he asked if he could ride it.

I looked at him and asked if he meant really riding it or pretending. He replied, “ I think I would just like to pretend again.

He and Ernie looked like they were having a wonderful chat. I love watching him pretend.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!

Planting and Spreading Words

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We planted two pumpkin seeds beside the our shed after our first attempts at gardening failed.

After awhile, two sprouts grew out of the ground. Then giant leaves appeared

JDaniel and I went to visit my sister Michelle’s family in Atlanta last week and when we came back the plants had started taking over the yard. My husband claims they tried to grab him as he drove past them on the riding mower.

I told JDaniel they are like Jack’s beanstalk. They seem to grow bigger and longer over night.

Our pastor Andy Lewis preached on the verses in James that speak about the tongue on Sunday. He challenged us to think about what we say and why we are saying it for a whole day this week. “Words grow,” he reminded us. “Words can take root in people’s hearts. They can change they way someone feels about you and they can make you wish they could be taken back.

His words hung in my heart when we left church on Sunday. I felt challenged about the words I say to my family and those I love.

My sister Kate who was down visiting last week (Yes, last week was filled with visiting with my sisters!) commented on how she hears my words come out of Jdaniel’s mouth.

In some ways that is a compliment. He speaks in complete sentences and uses lots of different kinds of words. In some ways it is a challenge. He is frustrated and demanding at times. He can try to order others around. I have heard him say, “ I need it right?” more than once.

JDaniel may be just what I need to monitor my words. He shares with me the words I have taught him while I speak with him and with others.

I want my words to grow and bear fruit. I do not want them to spread emotions and ways to interact with others that are not good to my son.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!

I am currently working on my next Mary Lee story. It will probably be posted at the end of the month.

Over Near the Tree Sits a Memory

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Mary Lee sat on her favorite white rocker watching the day turn to dusk. Her grey curls has begun to hung down low on her forehead. The summer air was still warm. The temperature earlier in the day had been hot and steamy.

Beside sat Frank her husband of fifty years. He had starting to doze in his rocker. Mary Lee loved to listen to the crickets chipping and Frank’s light snore fill the air around her.

She loved this time of day when things slowed down and she could just remember.

Mary Lee had such wonderful things to remember.

She and Frank had met in college. He was football player and she was the math tutor that helped him pass the required math classes for his major. Frank was actually a very good student. He just needed someone to go over things with him a few times. Frank loved to say that had met over the pluses and minuses.

After college they had gotten married and moved to Simpsonville, South Carolina. It was a small factory town. Frank had gotten a job in the business office of one of the factories and Mary Lee had worked as a bookkeeper for the local elementary school.

They had lived in a small house and saved money for several years to move to this big old Victorian on main street. On Sunday nights they had walked by this house and dreamed it would one day be theirs.

Mary Lee had fretted about the train tracks that lay only 100 yards away. Would it be a dangerous place to raises the children they would have? Frank had assured her that the picket fence around the house would be a deterrent and the backyard is where their children would want to be to play ball and chase butterflies.

Chiildren came quickly once they had moved into their dream house. First Sarah arrived and then Martha. They had hope for a boy too, but God closed that door and they had just the two girls.

Sarah and Martha had become their world. Mary Lee stayed home to raise them. She loved taking care of them.

On laundry day she enjoyed hanging their little dresses up on the clothes line in the backyard. The girls loved to grab onto the drying clothes and spin the circular clothes line around and around.

There had been many hours of creating special cookies and pies for dinner along with tiny cookie bites or fruit tarts made with the leftover dough.

The girls had loved to ride their bikes and trikes all over the yard. One would have thought the hard Carolina dirt and lumpy grass would have been hard for them to ride on, but it hadn’t held them back.

Mary Lee slowed her rocking and shock her head sadly remembering how quickly time has passed.

It seemed to her one fall that the girls had been in elementary school and by spring they were all grown up and beginning families of their own. How that had happened? Mary Lee couldn’t recall. It seemed like they went from little girls to ladies in mere minutes.

Each of the girls had stayed in town. They lived with their husbands and children not faraway. Mary Lee and Frank saw them often.

Mary Lee loved being a grandmother. She loved getting to see her girls as moms. They were wonderful moms.

Rocked slowly back and forth again. Mary Lee glanced across the yard at a tricycle covered in green by the tree near the front gate. One of the girls and forgotten to put it away one night and there is had stayed.

Frank had offered to take it out of the green tangle that surrounded it and Mary Lee had insisted that it stay. When he had asked her about it ,she had replied that it was a lesson. Frank had wanted to know about the lesson the tricycle had taught her. He loved to listen to her share her thoughts.

“The lesson,” she replied, “is that time is fleeting. You need to enjoy each moment and cherish each memory. That tricycle reminds me of our girls when they were little and loved to ride. It makes try to guess what must have caught their attention and drew them away from it and on to something else. It reminds me that for a time the white picket fence contained their whole world and they couldn’t bike beyond it.

Frank had a tear drop slowly from his eye after she shared the tricycles importance and agree that it needed to stay right where it was.

Mary Lee now wiped at tear from her eye. What a wonderful memories she had to think back on! What a wonderful lessons she had learned from them

End Note:

We walked a house on the 4th of July and I snapped a picture of this tricycle tangled near the tree. I had know ideas what story I would be able to weave based on it. I just knew there was one. It took most of this month to find Mary Lee and glean what reason there might have been for tricycle to be there.

I have no idea who lives in this house or why the tricycle is there. I am thankful that it was. I have loved getting to know Mary Lee and her story this month.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!

Needle Nosed Pliers Were the Right Tool!

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When you are doing yard work, you need to right set of tools. It is only through the vast experience you have working on your Cozy Coupe and watching your father do work on the house that you learn about the right tools to use. You will still  need to bring your tools out of the garage and sort through them to make the right choice.

Once you have selected the needle nose pliers as the right tool, you have to get down low and get to work. The pliers will need to be aligned with the bottom of the weeds instead of the top. If you try to pull them from the top the pliers will slip of and the weed will remain.

You may even have to stand up slowly from your low squat to give yourself some leverage. Your arms and legs working together can help you yank the weed out by its roots.

There are other times when you have to wretch the pliers into the dirt to loosen the weed from it. It requires that the pliers are dragged in a circle to create a moat around the weed.

When a really tough weed is loosen and deposited in the pail your father has given you, you may choose to celebrate by taking a clump of dirt over to your worms in their compost box. They will probably want to celebrate youy achievement with you.

Managing the Hedge Trimmer

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If you went over with the teenager that lives next store exactly how you wanted the bushes trimmed and shaped in the backyard, you would probably trust him to do the job exactly has you had described it.

Your three year old might think that the teenager needed a supervisor. He might feel the need to supervise the work while standing on a stepstool on the deck a few feet away from the bushes.

As the supervising manager he might feel as if he was needed to watch the teenager work on each step of the task. Each stroke of the trimmer would need to be analyzed and commented on. Critiques of how well trimming is going would need to be shared.

Despite the warm temperature and the need to constantly wipe his forehead, the bush trimming  manager might stay on the deck until the task is complete. He would just wipe his brow with his baseball cap from time to time.

Thankfully the teenager has two little brothers close to the manager’s age. Thankfully he is patient and good with kids! Thankfully he played along with the manager and asked him from time to time how he was doing.

The manager was a tough task master, but displayed expert management skills by issuing words of praise to the bush trimmer from time to time.

You have to love a manager that isn’t afraid to sweat it out with you in the heat of a Carolina summer day!

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

Keeping Hymn from Church

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If you would, try to imagine singing the words to Amazing Grace while trying to hold on to your preschooler who is standing on a pew next to you continually asking you where you are in the song as he sways to the music.

Many of you can imagine this moment and have repeated Sunday after Sunday due to the fact that your church encourages your children to be in the service with you or they don’t offer a Sunday school class that runs during the church service and Sunday school.

The services at my church have children over the age of five sitting with their parents for the first part of the service and then they are walked out to attend children’s church. There are some expectation to that and I want to share an exception with you that has challenged my families’ view on children in church.

The Situation

Sometimes JDaniel is the only child in the three year old class for the first twenty minutes of church. There are two boys that used to be with him and they are now upstairs in the sanctuary with their parents to listen to the prelude music and the opening hymns.

When we became aware of the other families’ decision to do this, we talked over whether we should do the same thing with JDaniel. We came up with a number of cons and pros his being church with us.

Cons

He doesn’t like to sit sill for long periods of time or stand still.

He may not want to leave to go to his Sunday school class. His way of expressing that would be to loudly share his desire to stay in the congregation.

He may decide he wants to talk about a random thought that has occurred to him during the singing to get our attention and distract other people.

He hates for me to leave him in Sunday school in the first place and has to be peeled off me several Sundays in month. We would just be delaying the battle.

Pros

He would be doing what the other boys are doing.

He won’t be walking into an empty room.

He has plans

Our decision was to have him stay in his class and I thought the discussion was over.

JDaniel was found recently flipping through a hymnal we keep in the living room looking over the music. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was learning the music to get ready for the big church. He really seems to want to try being upstairs. Three just seems young to try this experiment in music exploration.

What would you do? (Remember at three JDaniel is unpredictable.)

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

 
 

Instructions Needed the Right Tools to Follow

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So, I bought a wading pool for JDaniel and his friends to play in when they come over for playgroup. The directions that came in the box suggested that the pool could be blown up in 10-20 minutes by two adults.

Playgroup would arrive at my house on Monday so, on Friday I tried blowing up one section of the pool for 10 minutes and got very little of the pool inflated. I was left huffing and puffing.

I then tried using a bicycle pump to inflate the pool but, found that the nozzle won’t fit in the air hole of the pump.

Finally I called my next door neighbor to see if she had a pump that would work. She checked with her teenage son and he offered to pump up the pool using their air compressor.

Guess what? When you use an air compressor, the pool can be inflated in less than 10 minutes. I guess the directions were right if you have the right tools to make them work.

You might need the right boots to fill the pool too.

 
 
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlocks’ Alphabe Thursday. 
 
 

Have you ever has a set of directions that were difficult for you to follow?

Do Dust Bunnies Hatch?

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I talk about dust bunnies a lot with JDaniel as we remove them from our house. They seem to gather frequently behind tables and under furniture in our home.

One day while riding in the car JDaniel started asking questions about dust bunnies.

JDaniel: Where do the bunnies come from?

Me: Well, they form when dead skin, hair and other things gather close to each other on the floor.

JDaniel: No, how are they born? Do they hatch?

Me: Hatch? Sweet boy, they aren’t birds they don’t hatch.

JDaniel: Do they have moms and dads like I do?

Me: No, they don’t have parents?

JDaniel: Why? I do.

Me: Yes, you do. They aren’t real bunnies. If they were real bunnies, they would have parents.

JDaniel: Mom, they are real. I can see them.

Me: That’s true. I can see them too.

JDaniel: How do they grow?

Me: They move closer to other dust and it sort of attaches to them.

JDaniel: No, what do they eat.

Me: I don’t think they have mouths to eat.

JDaniel: Sure, they do.

Me: I guess there could be dust carrots.

JDaniel: I only like cooked carrots. Do dust bunnies like cooked carrots?

Me: I haven’t really noticed. I guess they would like them cooked.

JDaniel: Can I feed them some of mine?

Me: I don’t think we should feed them or they will start to grow larger and larger.

JDaniel: Are you sure they don’t hatch?

Me: Yes, I am sure they don’t hatch.

Disclaimer: I couldn’t remember the conversation word for word so, I added words that I felt I needed to. Most of it came straight from our conversation.

 
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday. 
 

Faithful Shield Gets Frequent Dents

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The shield of faith is described in the Bible as a part of the armor of God. It covered you from head to toe and protected you from attack. I always pictured the armor as a beautiful metal plate with intricate designs maybe studded with bronze. It was perfect in its construction and immaculate in it appearance.
My pastor recently gave a sermon on the shield of faith and described it as being filled with the dents of life. The dents and dinks had occurred during events in our everyday life when our faith was tested or we had not had trusted with faith in God.

As I sat there in the pew, I began to think about what had caused the dents in my shield. The times I tried to live my life on my terms and had ignored red flags placed to warn me of wrong decisions being made.

Being a mom has added dents to the shield multiple times in the last three years. I rush through the day sending up pleas and pleading prayers when things got challenging with my strong willed son instead of leaning on God’s promises or even taking time to listen to the answers to them.

During three year old tantrums, I feel my stomach knot up and I try to remain calm. The outward appearance of calm isn’t usually carried inside to the tense feeling I get when I want to handle them with grace and words that I don’t what to come back to haunt me.

I am going to be making a considerable effort to take the time to work on my faith in the coming weeks. Raising a three year old is hard. There are many more dents that will be appearing in my shield in the future. I do hope that I can hold fast to want I believe. A three year old or life in general can wear you down and lead you make decisions that you wish you hadn’t in moment of frustration or doubt.

When I look back at each of the dents in my shield, I don’t want to cling to the frustrations or failures that they might represent. I do want to look at them and see how God looked out for me and carried me through them.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday
 

What is parenthood teaching you?

 

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