Tidbits

Recent utterances from the mouth of Josiah...

~ in the car yesterday, he wondered if Dairy Queen and Burger King are married

~ his plan has been to grow up to be a barber like his daddy...recently he announced that he would like to take over the shop when he gets old enough and to do that he needed to learn two things: how to cut hair and how to be the boss (personally I think he's well on the way to knowing how to be a boss, since he likes to practice a lot around here!) :)

~ one of the neighbor girls, Marlene, was over here recently; and as evening approached, lightning bugs started flashing and the kids started catching them...Marlene caught one and killed it because, as she put it, she doesn't like ANY kind of bugs, even lightning bugs or ladybugs...Josiah was very sad that she killed it, so she kindly promised that in the future, she would not kill lightning bugs at our house, only at her house...after I had gotten Josiah tucked in bed that night, he waited a few minutes, then appeared at the top of the steps IN TEARS because of the thought of Marlene killing lightning bugs...Josiah had actually been going through a period where every night, he would pop back out of bed several times after he was supposed to stay there, so when I first saw him that night, being compassionate was not my first response!...but when I heard what he was saying and saw his tears, I responded tenderly and tried to help soothe his troubled heart...I find it's a tough balance sometimes between dealing sensitively with issues that come up at his bedtime (just when I'm ready to be done "mothering" for the day!) and enforcing the stay-in-bed-and-don't-get-out rule

~ speaking of sensitivity (or lack thereof), during our last family night (when we went to Silver Lake to feed the swans and ducks), we drove through the cemetery where my paternal grandparents are buried and where my parents plan to be buried...we stopped and got out to look around, then hopped back in the car...and as we drove off, I was wondering aloud to Jeff if the Old Order Mennonites around here make simple wooden caskets when they have a death in their community...this was shortly after the Showalter family tragedy, so such thoughts were fresh in my mind...I was telling Jeff that when I die, I'd like to be buried in a simple wooden casket because I don't see any reason in the world that my family should pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a fancy box that will sit in the ground!!!...Jeff, by the way, helpfully reminded me that I'm planning to donate my organs or donate my body to science, so I may not even need a casket :)...but all that aside, I didn't carefully consider the fact that Josiah's ears were listening in on this particular conversation!...he and I have talked about death a number of times before, even my death, so I didn't really think it would affect him so much...but affect him it did...oh, dear, that particular goof on my part required a huge amount of consoling, talking about God's provision of strength in time of need, reassuring him that I felt healthy and really thought I wouldn't die anytime soon, and on and on and on...for several nights after this, I would tuck him in bed, he would be in a happy mood, then after a little while I would hear his little footsteps, see him in the upstairs hallway, and have the privilege of dealing with his emotional self all over again!

~ today after afternoon naps, Josiah crawled up on the couch with me and we got to talking about the future...for some reason, he wanted to know how old he had to be before he got married so we talked about that for a while...and at some point, he informed me that he wouldn't need to go to college because he was going to be a barber and Daddy could teach him that...we talked about the process of learning to know a young lady and deciding if she was the right one to be his wife...he said that he would like to take her to the tea shop to talk (I went to a wonderful local tea house last week with some ladies, so I think that's what put it in his head)...at the end, his voice got choked up and he said that he was really happy and that's why his voice sounded funny, not because he was sad...as I got up from the couch to go do something else, he said "Thanks for talking"...wow, talk about role reversal!...I'm usually the one to get so emotional and happy that I cry, and also the one to verbally appreciate the time we spend talking together...it's funny to see my habits/expressions rubbing off on him :)...he's really a tender heart

And now a bit about David...

~ I have grand intentions of writing a lengthy post about his language development very soon because I really want to record this information for posterity, but here is one thing I was noticing today...when David says certain words that end in the "n" sound but have difficult (for him) beginning sounds, he replaces that beginning sound with "n"...for example, "spoon" becomes "noon," "cane" becomes "nane," "green" is "neen," "pan" is "nan," etc.

~ David is turning into a little comedian; he absolutely loves to make us laugh...for example, today he fell out of bed when he was supposed to be napping but was really horsing around...that wasn't funny at all because I suspect he fell right on his head and it really hurt (and he could have been seriously injured; thank God for His protection!)...but the funny part was after supper, I was telling the rest of the family about his fall and I asked David if his head hurt...he said, "yeah"; but I suspected that he was just in the I'm-going-to-say-yeah-to-everything mood...so I asked him, "are you a kangaroo?"...sure enough, he said, "yeah," but then he started hopping around like a little madman as if to convince us that he really was a kangaroo...it cracked us up--it was such a spontaneous thing on his part...so then Jeff asked him "are you a snake?"...and again David said, "yeah"...only this time David had just taken a drink of milk and when he opened his mouth to answer, some of it spilled out just like a snake releasing a mouthful of venom...ah, that boy, he can be such a ball of sunshine!