A weekend being around home

Friday
Since I was going to meet up with my friend and her son later in the morning, I knew I had to get to the Y early-ish if I wanted to get in a workout. I had very little motivation but I remember saying a prayer for the will to go and I did get the motivation to go. It may seem like something small, yet it touched me and reminds me no matter how small, the Lord loves when we bring things to him. It was really crowded in the nursery but it didn't seem to bother J. I had a good workout and we got home just in time for my friend Eileen to call. We met at the West Towne mall and had lunch. Then we went to the kids play area. At first, it was a little weird being there since I had flashbacks to when J was an infant and I wasn't doing well (in depression) and this was one of the only places I got out and went to particularly during that summer. It sure was a reminder of how far I have come from that time. J is pretty cautious there so he stays out of the way of the bigger kids, but I notice how much he's growing up since I don't need to follow him around anymore. He'll come running up to me every once in a while and hold onto me for a bit and just "check in". Eileen's son was having fun too. It's amazing that he's about 9 mos. younger than J but taller and bigger. They do well together.

We got home and my babysitter was waiting. She had beat us to the house. I'm glad I called her to let her know we'd be cutting it close. She watched J while I went to my doctor's appointment. When I got home, Karen had J show me what he had learned. He had been practicing on his kids computer and could find d, e, h and m on the keyboard! He was pretty excited about that. I could tell they had a great time playing. She is really good about doing activities that teach him something when she watches him. He was really tired and went right up for his nap. L worked later hours today and didn't get home until around 6:30 (versus 4pm). We ended up eating late and then before we knew it, it was J's bedtime.

Saturday
We had a nice, relaxing day at home today. It was really hot out so we spent most of our time inside. J and I did some different learning activities together like puzzles, flash cards, alphabet. He got really cranky and tired earlier than normal and when he started crying and wouldn't stop I knew it was time for an earlier nap around 12:30pm. He slept for almost 3 hours and when he was waking up I opened the door and started talking to him with his horse puppet while I hid behind the door. He was answering the horse's questions. Then he asked for the horse in his crib and he lay the horse down and covered him up with all his blankets. It was so cute. Well, we barely left the house all day until we decided to go out to dinner to Culver's. J is always excited about this. We brought his plastic elephant and zebra which he played with while we waited. A few older folks made a point to stop by and talk to him about his little animals. He was shy and just said hi. After dinner, we headed down to State Street where we had a nice several-block walk to rent some movies at a video store we like there. We saw a white horse and carriage on the way and J asked to stop and pet him. He was talking up a storm as we did and the owner just laughed and said he was a little motor mouth. On our way back, we saw a black horse and stopped to pet her on our way home.

Sunday
We volunteered at church this morning. On the way in, we saw my friend Heather with her daughter Wren. I pointed them out to J and he started talking about Joan and Olivia too. Wren and Olivia are his play date friends that we haven't seen for a while. J and Wren were together in the same room and he liked that. I barely noticed the time since we had 18 kids today in our room and I was involved with helping in a bunch of different ways. The time just flew and it was really rewarding. One of the girls sits alone in the way back and often plays with toys and doesn't interact much. I made it a point to talk with her last week and invited her to do things even though she didn't join in. I had no idea if I connected but then this week I was saying hi and talking to her again. During the bible story, I noticed she kept inching closer and closer to me until she was leaning up against me. I put my arm around her and then she laid her head on me. It was really sweet. After the service, I picked up J and we talked about what he learned. The focus is talking to God and prayer through the story of Hannah. J took in the story as he told me how Hannah was crying and wanted a child and then talked to God about it.

At home, he was playing and I noticed he put all his little people in one of the train cars a friend gave us. Then we colored together with some new crayons (which he was really excited about; we put them in the train car) but then it was time for his nap.

We went back to church later on for L and I to attend the service. J wasn't happy this time about going to his teaching room. He said "I'm all done churchy" and started crying when we left him. He ended up having a good time and was so excited to see us. He was running to me saying "uppy mommy, uppy mommy" until I could reach him. We continued in our series "Wired for Relationships" and this was a really good message on parenting. The focus was on Ephesians 6:4 and how Paul didn't write a manual for the Ephesians about childrearing, he gave them this verse. Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. One of the main things he shared was that as we teach our children to follow the Lord and we include family devotional time, our children will learn from what we do (how we live) not so much from what we say. If they never catch us reading our bible or hear us praying, the teaching we try to do will seem irrelevant. I believe this deep in my heart and so my focus is on living what I'm telling J I believe. I also want him to see I don't do this perfectly and our pastor hit on this too. He had his daughter come up and talk about ways he discouraged her and also ways he made an impact and one of the things was he and his wife were quick to apologize and admit their mistakes. This is hard for me to do, yet I feel it's so important so I strive to do this. But a confession....now I need to bring that attitude to life with my husband! I find it easier to apologize and say I'm sorry for something, yet so much harder to say the words "I was wrong". Lord, soften my heart.

We had a late dinner when we got home and then J colored some more. I noticed he's starting to watch the lines and doing better at staying in them. I haven't been working on this with him much at all but I encouraged him when I saw how well he was doing. Later, I was working on the blog and J comes up and says "Who's this blog?" and it just so happens I was working on my blog which I've mentioned a bit. I told him it was mommy's blog and we went through several days talking about and looking at all the pictures of him. Then really unexpectedly he bit me (something we are really trying to nip in the bud) and he got an immediate time out. All I had to do was tell him he was in time out and to go there and he went right over to his corner across the room. He tried to peek once but turned back when I told him to. Once he was done, when I asked him if he knew why he was in time out he was quick to reply that he hurt mommy and no biting. I really hope this is training him for no biting. When it was night-night time he was whining and crying but it's so funny in about 30 seconds he was happy again and going upstairs for bed.