This and That about Mr. J

~ crafts, crafts, and more crafts -- one thing I can cross off my worry list is that Josiah might possibly be deprived of the kindergarten experience of doing lots of crafts -- between a husband who loves pottery and eagerly shares the experience of working with clay, from molding to glazing to painting to firing, with Josiah...and a son who asks to do crafts every day...and me getting pushed over the hump of being intimidated by--gulp--crafts, somewhere we've crossed the line from reluctantly doing crafts once a week to now doing them on basically a daily basis -- here is the latest example: an Egyptian pyramid (although Josiah's colorful version makes the real ones pale in comparison!) -- in the fall of 2003 when Josiah was just one year old, we had the incredible experience of actually being in Egypt, hosted on a wonderful long weekend by my friend (and Egypt's greatest tour guide) Jackie -- every time I think about pyramids now, a mental picture springs to my mind of Josiah sleeping in the Snugli while we traipsed around in the Egyptian desert, admiring the pyramids and the Sphinx -- what a privileged life we've had!

~ lullaby update: it appears that all that emotion I poured out upon the news that I would no longer be singing Josiah's lullaby was wasted -- Josiah seems to have had a change of heart, and now occasionally asks me to sing him his lullaby -- sometimes he does; sometimes he doesn't; and that's fine with me; the choice is up to him -- but I'm so glad that the end of an era which I envisioned did not possess such finality after all! :)

~ Sunday school: Josiah gets to start going to a new Sunday school class tomorrow morning, and he is THRILLED -- many times today, he has spontaneously exclaimed, "I'm so excited about my new Sunday school class; I can hardly wait!"

~ generosity: one of the things that the children do during the first part of their Sunday school time is to gather with all the children from all the classes to sing a few songs, celebrate birthdays, and take up an offering for a special project -- tonight I told Josiah about the offering and told him that he could decide how much of his money he wanted to give -- I got out his bag holding a few dollar bills and some coins, and he looked through it to see how much he had and how much he should give -- I wondered to myself if he would decide to just give a little bit, or even resist the whole idea of giving, and if so, how I was going to deal with it: convince him to give, command him to give, let him not give? -- imagine my delight when he said, "What is the biggest one in here?" -- I told him the dollar bill was worth the most -- he unhesitatingly pulled one out to give, but then he said, "What if I give two? That would help a lot, wouldn't it?" -- I don't know if you've ever heard the Ray Boltz song, What If I Give All, but Josiah's generous heart reminded me exactly of the boy in that song -- like I always do when I hear it, my eyes teared up -- and I gave Josiah a big hug and kiss and told him that giving $2 would truly be wonderful -- I'm so proud of him I can hardly stand it!