I love being a mom. I don’t think that there is a stage that I haven’t enjoyed yet, I even liked the pregnancy part and now that I’m pregnant with number two I’m enjoying it all over again (despite the usual discomforts and annoyances). I have to say though that the questions and comments coming from Leighton at 29 months make my heart smile.
A few weeks ago we were working on teaching him to sing “Away In A Manger” for the church kids singing program. We got to the part that goes “no crib for a bed” and Leighton seemed quite disturbed by this. He asked “No crib for a bed?” And I explained that baby Jesus didn’t have a bed because He was born in a stable and he had to sleep in a manger where the animals were. I got out his Jesus Storybook Bible and found the story about Jesus’ birth. We read it and got to the part of Jesus sleeping in a manger. The picture that goes with the story is one looking down on Jesus sleeping in the manger with all the animals looking in over Him. He looked at that and then said “no bed for Jesus” and I said, “that’s right, there was no bed for Jesus”. He then took the book and leaving it open to that page placed it in his bed and looked at me and said “bed for Jesus”. And so every night for a couple of weeks, we had to find the Jesus manger picture as he called it and put it in bed with him. An hour or two after he went to bed each night we would hear the book crash off the side of his bed, but at least for a little bit each night Jesus had a bed to sleep in.
At almost 2 ½ he is full of questions and loves to talk. Car rides are full of conversation, even if it is answering for the 15th time where Daisy (our cocker spaniel) is currently at (the answer is usually home). The other night we were getting ready to “pray, sing, go to sleep” as he has called his night-time routine, when he looked at me and said “Where is Jesus?” My mind rushed to figure out how to answer such a simple and yet complex question in a way that he would understand. I finally said “Leighton, Jesus can be everywhere but Jesus wants to live in Leighton’s heart and help Leighton know what to do and always be there for Leighton”. I was pretty proud of my answer and thought I had done a good job of explaining basic theology to him. My esteem was soon crushed when he looked back at me and said “Jesus in books”. I smiled and said “That’s right Leighton, Jesus is in some of the books that we read”. Oh well, so much for a good teaching moment. We went through the routine of praying and singing, and just as I was finishing rubbing his back and singing, “Jesus Loves Me”, he turned his head to me and softly said, “Jesus in heart”. I bent low to kiss him as my heart smiled in joy.
I’ve included some photos of him making his ginger bread house and our first adventure at snow shoeing with him. It was super cold and windy that day, and we only made it a little over an hour, but he was a trooper and it was a good start of future adventures.
