Category: my Kids

Caleb said today that for him to resist playing with lego would be like putting chocolate on the table in front of Caitlyn. “I just can’t resist it,” he says. There’s a boy who knows his vices. Would that they never grew more harmful than that.

Karina was all dressed up in her Tigger outfit earlier in the day for Halloween that evening. In the thrill of the moment she begins to jump and bounce around in her usual fashion, as she is naturally quite a tiggery kind of girl. But then she walks over slowly with her shoulders slightly drooping and face downcast. “What’s wrong honey?” I ask her.
“Tail not woking.”
   “really, it’s not working?”
“No, it doesn’t bounce. It not woking.”
I try my best to look sad for her. I remember the times as a child facing the disappointment that “real life” wasn’t quite like what was depicted in movies or cartoons.

Karina likes the Iron Giant movie lately and goes around mimicking the line “I am Superman” from the show. Except she says,”I hooperman”. I can’t get it out of my head it’s so funny so I keep saying it wherever it fits.

I was serving pancakes to the kids a couple days ago…Tallie tries to be polite but asks,”next time could you please make the pancakes a little flatter?”
So what, is the surface too uneven for you…I mean how much flatter can you get than a pancake anyways? Later I realized she meant that they were a little too “thick” for her liking. The funny things kids say sure get your imagination tumbling, though, as you work your way toward understanding their intended meaning. I start thinking of the flattened squirrel road kill we had seen the day before when we were walking. Now that critter was seriously flat. Maybe that’s what you mean by flat? Ha!

Tallie was telling Kendra this morning about her dream and then told me at the breakfast table. She was so moved by it she kept saying, “I can’t stop thinking about it.” She was picking flowers for Jesus…I was in the dream with her somehow. We were putting the flowers on a table in the green grass. Tallie was wanting to hold them up to Jesus to take from her hand, but he was already drawing them up from the table without her realizing it. Then she saw them floating off the table and upward and saw the face of Jesus in a cloud formation and was obviously moved by that.

We have seen a significant change in her treatment of Karina lately. She has really been putting in effort to help her with things and shown more patience with her since we had started having her sleep in our room on the floor. Kendra has been spending more time holding Tallie and just talking to her. She really thrives on affection and perhaps was feeling a bit lost. I thank God for Kendra’s sensitivity to His wisdom and leading regarding what the children need.

It’s time to ask yourself…
how serious would you be able to take your interrogator when faced with a question such as this, “Did you did or did you didn’t drink from this cup?”. (spoken by Caleb in trying to ascertain the germ count of his drinking vessel)

yesterday we heard ghost sounds coming from the kids room down the hall…”oooooooooh, oooooooh”. It turns out that Tallie didn’t want Karina in the room and knew she wasn’t allowed to kick her out right then, so she resorted to attempting to scare her out with Ghost sounds and turning the lights out (it was still daytime though). It didn’t work but we had a little talk about manipulation. the attitude can’t be allowed but the circumstances can sure be funny sometimes.

Tucking her in at night the other day Tallie asks if I ever take off my ring. I tell her that i always keep it on except if i’m showing it to someone because it’s very precious to me and i don’t want to lose it…it reminds me of when i got married to Kendra. She thinks about it a minute and then says, “I know why, because if you didn’t have it on then everyone would want to marry you.” Now of course I understood that she was commenting on the fact that it shows people that i’m taken, but the way she put it felt like a nice little ego boost and made my laugh feel a little richer and more spontaneous as it erupted.

at the dinner table we were referencing something about La Rocha where we visited with the kids a few weeks ago, something about the beans we were sorting and how they were dried. Tallie says, again offhanded,”oh, you mean that place where we were helping the world?”

It sounded rather grand put in those terms and i thought to myself, “why not put it in those terms?” that sounds a whole lot more purposeful and connects you to a bigger purpose than just sorting a few beans. We really didn’t know who the beans were going to anyway and didn’t accomplish a lot of actual work, but God sees the heart of his children engaging to serve others and He sees the ripple effects that can indeed affect the world. The next time i do something that seems rather simple and unglamorous i’ll try to remember that i am “serving the world.”

Kendra and I are inside having another one of our heavyhearted discussions about feeling disconnected from our pasts and Kendra feeling losses of much that was important to her in her past and i here Tallie saying this, somewhat randomly, to Caleb outside on our deck. The timing of some of her phrases is uncanny and i don’t think she even knows what she’s saying sometimes.