My two-year-old gave me an unexpected opportunity yesterday to practice what I just preached Sunday. I noted in my sermon that I had been understanding Psalm 23 as a “counter-circumstantial prayer of defiance,” a “subversive prayer when you compare it to what you see around you.”
I mentioned some potential circumstances which make us feel far from the idyllic pastoral imagery of the Psalm, and then suggested that those are some of the best times to (defiantly) pray Psalm 23:
When you hear about wars and rumors of wars, say this Psalm.
When your best friend gets sick, say this Psalm.
When someone in your family grieves you by their seeming lack of care for you, say this Psalm.
When you don’t know what the next year of your life holds, say this Psalm.
An instance I didn’t think to include was:
When your two-year-old daughter draws with permanent marker all over the brand-new cork floor that the church graciously put in last year in the parsonage kitchen… say this Psalm.
When I noticed the damage, this image is about the opposite of how I was feeling:
Image Credit: LifeintheHolyLand.com (Todd Bolen), used with permission
I was feeling more like this:
For at least 10 minutes as I frantically scrubbed, I didn’t even remember there was a Psalm 23, let alone think to say it.
But then I took a step back (by God’s grace) and began to quietly say–through gritted teeth:
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul….
And when my gracious and patient wife came home, she gently reminded me of the “magic sponge” we have under the sink that takes permanent marker off of everything. Within minutes, the green marker drawing on the floor was gone. Gone. The cork floor is good as new.
True, there are much darker valleys in life to walk through, but I think sometimes in parenting those little mini-valleys of frustration and exasperation can add up pretty quickly. And for us parents, they can be the regular “stuff” of our everyday existence. We need good Psalms to pray for the big valleys, and good Psalms to pray for the little valleys.
For those moments–should my two-year-old again somehow elude my watch like she has been so eager to do lately–I will try again (and again) to remember to “say this Psalm.”
We saw a snapping turtle crawling up our street this morning. We’d seen deer and turkeys in the yard (e.g., the turkey who was trying to make a nest in our raised bed tomato plants earlier this week), but this oversized turtle was a first.
Turtle Power
After marveling at the creature with our kids and taking some family/turtle photos, my wife and I realized we had three options:
1. Leave it.
2. Call Animal Control to come rescue it.
3. Pick it up, put it into our wheelbarrow, and take it back into swampy, woodsy safety.
We ruled out Option 1. The backside of our house connects to a huge construction site, and even a large snapping turtle wouldn’t have stood a chance against a Link-Belt excavator.
Option 2 was easy—we called and left a message, but then realized a snapper was probably not super-high on the city’s priority list of things with which to be concerned.
So we were left with Option 3.
There’s a fine line between wise caution and being a chicken, and I had planted myself squarely between the two. It took me five minutes (maybe more?) before I could finally psych myself up enough to pick up the turtle to put it in the wheelbarrow. To help me over my caution/fear, my wife graciously offered to put a stick in front of the snapper’s mouth, so that it could be biting the stick while I picked it up, rather than biting me.
She gave him the stick. He bit it. Then I chickened out and lost my chance. (Or was being smart by trying to preserve all 10 fingers?) The stick was out of his mouth now. So my wife gently tapped him on the shell with the stick and… SNAP! All K-J fingers were still in place, but I jumped back. If I was going to do this, it had to be now.
So my fearless spouse tried the stick routine again, got it in the snapper’s mouth, and (with kitchen gloves on) I reached down and started to pick it up from the sides of its shell. SNAP! He missed me, but I knew he was going for me that time. I couldn’t even see his face when he snapped—he was all neck and mouth.
At this point we decided to stick with the aforementioned options 1 and 2. I was especially concerned that if I picked the turtle up and it snapped in/at my hands, I might jump away and drop him on the pavement. We didn’t want to hurt him.
But we had to get on with our morning, so, leaving the snapper where he was, I went to the assistant foreman in his trailer office behind the parsonage and told him about the turtle, so that he could tell his equipment operators to BE SURE NOT TO RUN HIM OVER (please).
His face lit up: “I have a guy who loves reptiles!” (He used a few additional adjectives and adverbs to make that clear.) Then he called across the worksite to someone in one of the new duplex units: “Bird!” A fitting nickname, I suppose.
With cigarettes and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in hand, “Bird” and a couple others came over to where the turtle had now settled itself. Without batting an eye, he gently lifted it up by the tail to see that she (I had had the snapper’s gender wrong) was settling into a leaf pile in our yard to lay eggs. The turtle must have known Bird was a “reptile guy.” There was no snapping this time.
Animal Control still had not come, but Bird said he knew a place where the snapper would be safe. Minutes later, Bird and his co-worker were driving away from the site with the turtle in their pickup truck—taking it now (presumably… hopefully!) to safety.
This all began between 8:30 and 8:45. I don’t know what mornings are like in your house, O reader, but that tends to be crunch time for the K-Js. We have to make sure everyone is dressed, fed, and pottied, and we have to make our eldest son a lunch and drive him to the bus stop. Then my wife and I each have various responsibilities and places to get to. So the morning routine can be stress-filled, try as we might to make it not be so.
This morning wasn’t too bad, but I was already thinking about all that I had to get done this morning… and then we saw the snapper in the road. As we finally got into the car with the kids to drive to our different destinations, it was 9:45, a full hour later.
But I can tell you—whatever had been concerning us at 8:45 was far from our minds at 9:45!
It hasn’t been that long since I read through, studied, and preached on the passage from Matthew 6 where Jesus tells his disciples to “consider the birds of the air.” If God feeds them and cares for them—animals that presumably have no souls and have not the spiritual and emotional capacity that we have to experience God’s love—how much more will he care for us!
And if God can somehow be overseeing a process whereby a snapping turtle is brought to safety by our new construction working “friend,” how much more can he make sure we have all we need?
Or, as a college friend used to say: “Everything is going to be alright forever.”
After using the speakers for a Sunday morning class, I put them on top of our family van as I was strapping in one of the kids. I got my almost-two-year-old daughter strapped in, we were all happy, the kids had done great in church, and we were going out to eat–a rare treat on a Sunday afternoon. The sun was even shining.
So with everyone strapped in and on our way to family lunch, about 10 minutes into our drive–when we were on the highway, of course–I heard a loud thud at the top of the car and saw in my peripheral vision a blur of pink and purple bouncing around behind me as I sped away.
WHAT WAS THAT?
Oh. The speakers. That I had left on top of the van.
I had received the speakers gratis as a review sample, but I had become fond of them. They were quite convenient for toting around and using in various settings. It was especially nice to amplify music without any wires.
I quickly decided that, yes, I did want to go back to get these speakers. But being on the highway, I would have to exit, get on the highway going the other direction, exit again, and go back the way I came.
By the time we neared the spot of the incident, it had been about 8 minutes. Surely some car–or multiple cars–had by now demolished my precious pink-and-purple players of Passion Pit, Pavement, and Petra.
But, no.
THEY WERE STILL THERE.
I slowed down and turned on my hazards to get off to the shoulder to (carefully, only when there were no cars) walk into the highway to retrieve my speakers.
They were right there, miraculously between the two lanes. A hundred cars must have passed them, leaving them mercifully in tact.
As I pulled over and slowed to a stop, the car behind me obliviously moved across the lane divider to pass me and…
Yep.
RAN OVER MY SPEAKERS.
Well, not just ran over. CRUSHED them.
They broke into a hundred pieces, and the car just cruised on by.
When my wife was reading to the kids tonight (from Ranger Rick, Jr.), she read, “A cane toad can be as big as a small dog.”
My response, from the other room was: “Gross!”
My six-year-old promptly corrected me: “No… that’s awesome!”
I suppose he’s right. The photo above is of a cane toad, which I have not had the privilege of seeing in person. (They’re not around these here parts.)
Yesterday was a momentous occasion: the first all-family ice cream outing of the summer. (Shhh… it’s summer in my mind.) We did the almost-impossible-to-beat triumvirate of
ice cream
park
used bookstore
At the used bookstore, we got a hardcover edition of four Lyle the Crocodile books bound together (sewn binding, mind you!) for a mere $5.
Tonight we read the first one:
In The House on East 88th Street, Mr. Primm, Mrs. Primm, and their son Joshua move into a new house, only to find a crocodile in the bathtub. They’re even more shocked when–as they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of it–it saunters down the stairs and starts doing tricks for them.
It’s a funny and well-written book. We’re looking forward to reading the rest. Highly recommended #kidlit!
Having seen and thoroughly enjoyed The LEGO Movie, my six-year-old son has been reading a couple of related books: The LEGO Movie: The Official Movie Handbook andThe Lego Movie: Junior Novel.
The Movie Handbook packs a lot in, both text and full-color illustrations, especially for the price.
In the words of my six-year-old, “It’s really good. If someone had never seen it, I’d say that the best pages ever are ‘Where are My Pants?’ This is an episode of a TV show in Bricksburg in The LEGO Movie.”
[Dad’s editorial note: it’s more tame than it sounds, and one of the funnier parts of the movie, which is quite clever throughout.]
Here are some of the characters in the books, as told by my six-year-old:
Emmet: A construction worker. He is always scared of the bad guys. He falls out of a tower that, like, goes past heaven.
Lord Business: A bad guy. Someone who tries to defeat the good guys. He tries to wreck the Piece of Resistance.
Batman: A superhero. He turns Bad Cop’s car into a baby carriage in the book (i.e., in the Junior Novel).
Bad Cop: A bad police. Someone who helps Lord Business.
Wyldstyle: A superhero. She asks Emmet if he’s “the Special.” Her hair has a ponytail on the side.
P. UniKitty (i.e., Princess UniKitty): She’s really cute. She says, “Any idea is a good idea, except the not happy ones!”
Here’s a look inside the Movie Handbook:
The Junior Novel is more than 100 pages of text at a level that seemed to be just right for a six-year-old. Its opening lines are as silly as the rest of the book and the movie:
Bright red lava flowed from the volcano that marked the entrance to the hidden temple. Inside, a mighty weapon called the Kragle was nestled in a glowing sarcophagus.
Here is a shot of the Table of Contents from the Movie Handbook:
The books tie in well with the movie, yet still leave a lot on the screen. The Movie Handbook also comes with a fold-out poster, which is now taped to the ceiling above my son’s top bunk bed.
Thanks to Scholastic for the review copies, given with no expectation as to the content of the review. Find The Lego Movie: The Official Movie Handbook here at Amazon (affiliate link) or here at Scholastic’s site. The Junior Novel is here at Amazon (affiliate link) and here at Scholastic’s site.
Apologies in advance for the scatalogical nature of this post. But I’m trying to get back to Family Fridays on this here blog, and nothing says family (at least our family) like this actual conversation that took place in the kitchen yesterday:
3-year-old son: Daddy, can you help me?
Me: Hold on… I’m getting your sister some food.
3-year-old son: Some poop?
Me: <Trying to stifle laughter>
3-year-old son, wanting to be heard and still awaiting my response: POOP???
Me: No… some FOOD.
3-year-old son: OHHH. I thought you said you were going to give her some poop.
My now six-year-old has been asking again to learn more Hebrew. We started last spring (see here and especially here), but the Hebrew learning has been largely on hold.
We have some materials from Sarah and David’s Read Hebrew, an interactive program to help children (and others) learn Hebrew.
The other day, as you can see above, we reviewed the alphabet again and did some activities in The Aleph Bet Story Workbook.
Last year The Aleph Bet Story Audio CD was on heavy rotation on the way to school. It accompanies The Aleph Bet Story, which has creative illustrations and mnemonic devices for learning the shapes and sounds of the Hebrew letters. Even quite a few months later, the sweet boy pictured above remembered most of the letters. The system seems to be effective. And he really likes it!
The materials we’ve been using are these ones. As we pick back up again, I hope to post more in-depth about our journeys. See more of what Sarah and David offer here.
I’ve recently received for review How Toddlers Thrive: What Parents Can Do Today for Children Ages 2-5 to Plant the Seeds of Lifelong Success. I haven’t had a chance to read much of it yet, but wanted to note it here. Clicking on the image above or here will take you to its Amazon page (affiliate link). The book’s product page says:
How Toddlers Thrive explains why the toddler years are different from any other period during childhood, what is happening in children’s brains and bodies at this age that makes their behavior so turbulent, and why your reaction to their behavior—the way you speak to, speak about, and act toward your toddler— holds the key to a successful tomorrow and a happier today. This provocative new book will inspire you to be a better parent and give you the tools to help you nurture your child’s full potential. Stop fighting with your child and start enjoying every minute of your time with them… while planting the seeds of happiness and success that will last a lifetime.
It sounds idealistic, but what parent of a toddler isn’t looking for more tools? It’s gotten 4.5 stars on Amazon thus far. I’ll read it as soon as I can and report back here.
I don’t remember where we first read this parenting advice, so I can’t guarantee its scientific backing, but here it is anyway.
When your (hypothetical) six-year-old child is talking and singing to himself in bed at night–after you’ve put him to bed–as long as he’s not keeping his (hypothetical) siblings up… let him talk and sing.
Why? Because he’s processing his day in the ways he knows how. And if this (hypothetical) six-year-old son is in all-day kindergarten this year and has just moved this summer, that processing time is important to his development and well-being.
So we let our (not hypothetical) six-year-old son talk and sing after we put him to bed, as long as it’s quiet, and as long as it doesn’t go on for more than a half hour.
More times than not, he’s done in about 15-20 minutes and then fast asleep. And we haven’t gotten upset or into a verbal struggle with him. And–most important–he’s had some added processing time before he goes to bed.
Words on the Word 