Troublemakers and Thunderstorms

First of all, thanks for all your encouragement and support and prayers you guys continue to heap upon us. We desperately covet them. I'm determined to end my church searching soon (as in the next week or two before we vacation with the Harmons- yay!), not because we have found "the" church, but because of the effect it's having on our children. Well, mostly the middle one. Liam is more superficial with what we call his "first world problems" of picking a church based off of the material used for the Sunday School chairs.

It's true.

Ask him. He will tell you that he prefers wood over plastic. (And the more "school classroom"-y the room looks, the better.)

Sheesh. I've been trying to put a kibosh on that one by showing him pictures of children learning on the floor/ground. And making it personal (eg- the Gersts, where he prays for them as they on our missionary wall).

Aiden on the other hand has started freaking out. Desiring to wear church clothes all day because he is so excited for Sunday School, but then refusing to go when he doesn't see his old Sunday School teacher. It's been painful. And it makes me feel selfish each new church we attend. He ends up sitting in the service partially with us, before he freaks out about the unfamiliarity of that (he handles loud noises worse then I do). I am seeing me in him more each day. Humbling.

And then there's Callum. He doesn't care where we are, he just wants to be with me. And cries when he's not. But gets over it 5 minutes later. And when I come to pick him up, he's happy, while the teacher never ceases to comment that he's "busy", or is a "climber".

Which leads me beyond my digression to the point of this post.

He is busy. And he is a climber. And everyday, Joel comes home and asks me how my day was. And I usually reply with "good" (sometimes I really mean it, and other times I'm lying because I'm having one of those moments, you know, the ones where you know deep down that we are so blessed with so many good things but you can't really think of one right now). He then asks what I did that day.

Now it used to bug me when he'd ask me that (and if I'm honest, I do have those moments where it still does). I thought he was trying to see how productive I was that day. As if he was critiquing my ability to be a SAHM.

Which I'm not very good at. But I'm blessed, and figure the lower I am, the more improved I can become by God's grace.

And maybe it's a bit convicting too, because I might not work all the time... but I'm a work-in-progress in that area too :)

But lately, I've had an excuse.

Sorta.

It actually gives me nightmares when I think about how I'm going to homeschool.

His name is Callum.

Yes, I love my child, but if I'm not watching him every minute, he is getting into trouble.

We've learned that when you are planning on heading up the stairs, you check to make sure he's not up at the top. Otherwise, chances are likely there is something headed down the stairs, as he learns the laws of gravity. Sometimes they are soft- more often they are not.

We've learned that he can escape his pack-n-play. Thankfully, he can't open the rounded door knob handles yet.

Or there's the bathrooms. He still loves toilets but now tries to imitate the rest of us, toilet paper and all.

If Joel's office is open, that's the first place he will bee-line for, as he'll climb either on the tower or the chair to get on top of the desk, and either go for the phone, or if it's not there, watch gravity's effect on life once again.

And if the front or garage door is slightly cracked open, he's out as quick as possible.

And he will push the chairs to get to where he wants to go in the living room/kitchen/dining room. If it's a bit too low, well, he will just use the trash can too.

And heaven forbid you take your eyes off of him to go use the bathroom...

Usually he just goes after the plastic water cups to get a drink and ends up spilling water across the floor. Today, he decided to push everything that was on top of the table off. Except his pacifiers. Which is why, after he was disciplined and sentenced to his room for the hour it took me to clean up the mess, the first thing he did when I turned my back was climb back up on the table to get them (even though he could've reached them from the ground).

And of course, he loves pestering his brothers. I took this video tonight. I missed the first 5 minutes of him one-finger-poking Aiden and stopping when Aiden would tell him no, and then, when Aiden turned away, would start poking him again. As you can see from the video, he loses interest when no attention is paid. And when reprimanded, always smiles (he only cries when disciplined, or reprimanded by his Daddy).

They were kind of cute though. They were watching the thunderstorm outside, and would gasp everytime lighting would crack before their eyes.

Oh, and in case you are wondering what lighting looks like, here is a little video that Aiden wanted me to take for Mark and Bev.

Hope you all are having a blessed week too- rain or shine! :)