we have had a lot of fun over the past few years having dinner every so often with one of the families we know through king of kings and student edge. i was trying to tell nate last monday morning where we were going for dinner that night. he just wasn’t getting it until i told him we were going to the house with the puppet shows. from that moment on he was ready to head out the door and over to their place. last monday was no exception in the puppet show department. nate and later on jilly both got to help. as soon as i make it back to hobby lobby, my goal is to make a puppet show curtain for one of our doorways. we’ve also been collecting all the puppets we have around the house. we’ve come across 5, but look forward to one day maybe having a collection which rivals the wolcotts!
We had a great weekend with Nate. It was a busy one, but he was a trooper and was in a great mood. We walked away from the weekend with a couple of cute memories.
Sunday after worship Nate and I headed home to pass time before Brad got home for lunch. I got to work doing some picking up, and Nate headed to the living room to play with his toys. Not surprisingly, the blocks got dumped all over the floor before he could do anything else. (He doesn’t necessarily intend to play with them, but them must been skewn across the floor during all playtimes.) He then got his tractor that his great-grandparents Knorr gave him for Christmas. Not uncommon, but what he did with it was adorable. He took it and tipped it backwards and then said, “mooo”. You’re in one of two groups right now, you either thinking “huh?” or you’re thinking “Cars”. Yes, Cars is one of his favorite movies and the tractor tipping scenes is one of his favorite scenes. It was just adorable that this thought popped into his head as he played with his tractor. He’d never done it previously and wasn’t prompted in anyway. I did get him to reenact it for me so I could get it on video. I’ll try to get a few recent videos uploaded later or in the next few days.
The other thing happened at bedtime. We always have teens over on Sunday night for Bible Study. We have a great time, and Nate really enjoys himself. (He gets a fair bit of attention.) Last night we were waiting on the last kid to get picked up, and I could tell Nate was getting tired. It was after bedtime for him so I took him up to start getting changed. I told him he could either rock with me or lie in bed until Dad was ready to come up and pray together. The next thing I knew, he’d gone into what will be his new room once we paint and was pointing to the bed saying, “nigh-nigh”. Huh. That’s a new one. He’s never thought of that bed when it come to going to sleep. Alright. I grabbed a few comfort items out of his crib, crawled under the covers with him, and we read several books as we waited for Dad. When Brad came up, we asked Nate if he wanted to sleep in his crib or in the big bed. He indicated he wanted to sleep in the big bed with a huge smile on his face and a happy laugh. We prayed and tucked him in. As we turned out the light and began to shut the door, the saddest, most heart-breaking cry of, “mommmmaaaaa” came from Nate. He shot up from where he’d previously been lying with a smile, and his arms shot up in the air. We asked him if he wanted to go sleep in his crib, and got a definite “yes”. He happily got into his crib and went to sleep quickly. My hope raised for a moment that maybe my creature of habit and familiarity child might just transition himself from crib to bed, but he quickly snapped me back to the real world. It could get interesting in the next few weeks when we really do move him over. Any tips? (We’re not going the toddler bed route.)
I’m going to attempt to put a youtube clip of the scene from Cars I talked about earlier. Hope it works.
Brad has used several clips off this site as sermon and teaching illustrations. I happened to be looking for something else on the site one day, and I came across this. I’m not sure why it came up with my search results since it had nothing to do with what I was looking for, but I thought it was pretty good. If you watch The Office on NBC, you can see they used the Office style. Next time they start pushing the use of your spiritual gifts at your church, see if dodgeball shows up on your inventory. (Unfortunately, it’s not one of mine.)
Letting Nate feed himself with spoons and forks has not been too high on my priority list. They tend to encourage him to play rather than eat. There comes a time in every toddler’s life where he or she must make that giant leap to not eating everything with your hands. That time has come for our Nate. I usually have to try to keep myself busy. Otherwise, I’d be there trying to take over, and he would never learn. So here is a little peek into our learning process:
