The Final Touch

I’m in love with my almost-7-year-old’s brain. Seri­ously. My heart just swells when I think about how intel­li­gent he is. (Please under­stand, I’m not say­ing he’s more intel­li­gent than his brother or his class­mates or any other child; it’s not even so much a mom’s bias at work here as it is amaze­ment at the won­der that is the human brain cre­ated by God.) Yes, I am in love with that mys­te­ri­ous col­lec­tion of gray mat­ter between my lit­tle guy’s ears that makes him capa­ble of doing such things as work­ing his way through a pre­cise series of steps to cre­atively and resource­fully do what he has become fix­ated on doing.

That said, he has — as you might expect of some­one his age — a ways to go in the common-sense depart­ment. In other words, his highly capa­ble brain is some­times too capa­ble for his own good… or for mine. Read the rest of this entry »

What could pos­si­bly be more beau­ti­ful to a parent’s ears than the sound of two young broth­ers play­ing nicely together? — espe­cially when those same two are usu­ally fight­ing, or at least when the elder is usu­ally snip­ping at the younger? Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2009 AASU Arm­strong Uni­ver­sity Archives | more info (via: Wylio)

My lit­tle guy earned him­self deten­tion today.

Yup. In kindergarten.

I’ve never had a kid get deten­tion before, but some­how I thought if it did hap­pen, it would be in, say, fourth or fifth or sixth or sev­enth grade. Or maybe eleventh… you know, for skip­ping class or something.

Nope. Kinder­garten. For punch­ing a fel­low kinder­gart­ner in the face. Read the rest of this entry »

“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” –1 Corinthi­ans 1:31

As promised, here is my “boast­ing in God” story:

The day before yes­ter­day, one of my 6-year-old’s reg­u­lar babysit­ters (whom he adores), a 5^th-grader who lives next door (daugh­ter to the friend I wrote about yes­ter­day), was charged with walk­ing him home from school. Gabe chose to be dis­obe­di­ent and to play on a huge snow pile halfway between school and home. When he refused to come with her, she tried her best to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion, but he ended up hit­ting her. She finally opted to leave him there and came to me, nearly in tears, Read the rest of this entry »