Baby Boy

Second Son ran into my bedroom this morning with the news that he had pulled his second loose tooth.  He was so excited.  My husband pulled his first tooth out, so it was a big deal to him to have pulled this one out on his own.  I was watching him while he was telling the story of how it all came about and he looked so big and seems to be growing up so much.  It just broke my heart.  :-)  For so long he was THE baby.  He was just about six when Third Son was born.  Habit is hard to break and I keep thinking of him as my baby, even though in December he will officially be the "middle child."  God bless him.  ;-) 

Anyway, in honor of my baby boy, I wanted to post this article that I wrote a few years ago for our homeschool support group's newsletter.  It's all about him.

Grace from God
October, 2003

For so long, I have focused on Ben and his schooling, he being our oldest.  And one of the mantras in the homeschooling community seems to be “teach to the oldest.”  I generally agree with that statement, but wonder if I was taking it a little too far as God was bringing my vision into focus on our youngest son, Jack.  Common knowledge states that the middle child is usually the most overlooked, but as I observe homeschooling families, it seems the youngest are left out the most, as we all work so hard to provide those perfect teachable moments for our school aged children.  I began to feel God pointing this problem out to me, in my own home, and I began asking Him which way He wanted me to go. 

And as I prayed, I felt God softening my heart towards this busy boy who is in to everything he can reach.  This is the three-year-old boy whose favorite way to speak is as a growling tiger, who loves to jump so much that we bought him a mini-trampoline, whose favorite question is “Can I touch it?”, and can run away faster than the blinking of an eye.  He offers this old mom a challenge on a daily basis!  And whereas before, I was losing my cool with him when I found him in one of those situations that would have driven me crazy, I found that with God’s grace, I’ve been able to go with the flow.

Perfect example.  Some friends were coming over for a visit.  As they pulled into the driveway, Jack ran into the bathroom to go potty, but rather than getting up on the toilet to do his business, I guess he thought it was more fun to watch it go all over the bathroom floor.  Very funny.  Not a biggie.  Clean it up, and move on with our visit.  But during our visit, Jack pushed a chair over to one of the cabinets that houses all our fun, artsy-craftsy stuff.  He climbed onto the counter, opened the door and found a brand new bottle of silver glitter!  He dumped the entire bottle all over the counter and kitchen floor.  Hey, we’ve got a Kirby…suck it up!  And to wrap everything up in a neat and tidy bow, as our friends left, Jack gave a replay of the bathroom incident. 

But God has been faithful to me!  As I cleaned up each of those messes, I found that I wasn’t wishing over and over for Jack to get older so he would stop doing stuff like that.  I found myself thinking about all the detail cleaning I was given the opportunity to do!  If Jack had not spilled the glitter all over the floor, it would have been a long time before I took time to use the vacuum hose to clean out the nooks and crannies in our kitchen.  And as I cleaned the bathroom floor, I found myself also reaching out for the baseboards and giving them a good scrub. 

I could give more examples of the great cleaning situations Jack has put me in just during the last two or three days!  Like today when he poured all of his bubble mixture into the bathroom sink and added water and had a grand time playing in the bubbles while splashing the water and soap all over the floor and himself.  Praise God!  Snap a picture, let him play and marvel at my blessing as I get to detail clean the floor yet again!

What a blessing God has provided me in Jack, and I can’t thank Him enough for trading out my old, sour attitude about the situations in which I find myself with him.  I wonder what sort of messages I was sending all of my children as I threw my little mini-fits about another mess to clean up.  As I prayed for direction from God concerning my family, I imagine Him sitting on His throne shaking His head and saying, “You bet!  Another day, another round of forgiveness and second chances!”  He’s so good!