Yes, yes they do. We have a rockin’ household, that’s for sure. 🙂
p.s. Steven and I have matching shirts with this! I sent him his for the first Christmas gift I ever gave him, when we were still courting. And I bought myself one to match. Then one of my good friends bought us this tot-sized copy when I was pregnant with our first baby! Super fun.
One of my greatest tasks these days is parenting Gabriel. There are so many facets to this calling of mine! It is my greatest joy, privilege, responsibility, time-consumer, and challenge. For instance, click here to read another great article by Rachel Jankovic on the calling of motherhood—it isn’t a leftover activity for someone who is mediocre at everything else, and it isn’t something to pursue because you happen to think kids are cute: it’s a righteous calling, and if God blesses you with it, you ought to rejoice and embrace it because you are forming generations in each child you raise in your home. It’s so huge. But Rachel puts the hugeness into a concise little article you’ve simply got to read. Really. I mean it.
Okay. Plug for that article aside… I am more thankful that I can tell you that God has blessed me with the privilege of being Gabriel’s mother for over three years, and I am humbly excited about continuing on this journey for the rest of my life! Parenting changes over time, but it never goes away. It’s a fluid calling, though, and I am constantly praying for wisdom in how to adapt to the ever-changing aspects that God calls me to incorporate into my parenting skills-set.
DISCIPLING
The spiritual aspect of parenthood is, obviously, probably the most important and prevalent. It isn’t just what I teach Gabriel with my words that teaches him about his God or trains him in the ways of the Lord—it is everything about my life. How I interact with him, how I interact with others, how I show respect and love for his father, how we speak about his siblings, how we treat our home and our family and our neighbors, how we prioritize, the things I do and say and am from day to day! I am prayerfully seeking to live out a beautiful gospel to him so that God his Father would be more attractive in his eyes due to the way he is discipled and parented, rather than less so. Gabriel loves to pray and sing, he loves to have us read the Bible to him, he loves communion, he loves church. Really, he just loves to worship his Creator! It is beautiful to see him growing up as a child of God. I am so thankful to know that he belongs to God. It is beautiful and humbling. If you ask him, “Gabriel, who do you belong to?” he will readily tell you, “I belong to God”—nobody can doubt it.
At church, Gabriel has the blessing of sitting with not only his parents but also his grandparents. It is a blessing to have generations worshipping together in a single pew. Gabriel sits, stands, kneels, prays, sings, holds his Bible during Scripture readings (he wants to read along, but of course that’s a work-in-progress…), and sits quietly during sermons (he likes to play with Grandmama’s bracelets, or draw in his notebook, or “read” his Bible, or sometimes eat funfruits…). He loves to put his hands up at the end of the service when we sing the Gloria Patri. I frequently am up on stage playing piano, and sometimes I’ll see him signaling to me “I’m obeying, Mommy” because he loves to obey and please his parents and “make God happy.”
We are continuing to work on catechizing Gabriel, although I’ve been taking it slower than I had originally hoped. It’s my fault, not Gabriel’s. He latches onto things much more quickly than his mother does. I am thinking of starting to have him memorize some little Scripture verses. He has already memorized so many psalms and hymns and liturgical songs, so I know he could do it easily. I just have to pick which ones to start with him.
DISCIPLINE
Discipline is an area of parenting that really does change frequently as the child grows, as the sins change, and as we mature together as a family under God’s guidance. We are constantly seeking grace and wisdom from God our Father as Steven and I desire to raise our son, and discipline him, according to the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Gabriel is very receptive to discipline, he knows the beauty of forgiveness (both giving and receiving), and his confessions of sins (especially for ones I don’t see him commit) are humbling and beautiful examples even to his own mother.
I am learning to be more vigilant in some areas and more lax in other areas as Gabriel grows and boundaries change. It is a challenge for me, but I am thankful for the grace God gives me in this.
I am also endeavoring to remember not to “share” my son’s particular sins in public. That is something that I think is really important, and so I am seeking to be diligent in that. I don’t think it’s wrong to say to another mom, “I’ve been there” or “we’ve struggled with that too” for the purpose of mutual edification in godly motherhood. But I am not going to vent to someone about a sin my son committed or go into detail about our struggles in a certain area—I want my son to grow up knowing that his parents have always respected his position in our home and that when we forgive him for a sin, we seek to emulate God by putting it as far from us as the east is from the west. I seek wisdom and diligence in this as well.
GABRIEL’S INTERESTS
This boy of ours loves such a variety of things! He loves to cook and clean and shadow Mommy all day; he loves to mow the lawn with Daddy and go to the hardware store with Daddy; he loves lemonade, cherries, ice cream, and root beer; he loves to play computer games (Grandpapa taught him how to play cards on his desktop and he can do Hearts all by himself!) and board games; he loves T-ball and soccer and all sorts of running games; he loves to be tickled and chased and play hide-and-seek; he loves going for drives in the car and he loves being at home; he loves spending the night at my parents’ house and he loves going to our new house to see what our builder (who he admires) has been up to and he always asks to see his room and Baby’s room.
Gabriel enjoys playdough and coloring and painting and stickers and “writing his name.”
He loves to cuddle in bed with us (he adores Saturday mornings just for that reason), watch movies together (we’ve taken to doing family movie nights occasionally, usually streaming Thomas The Tank Engine or some equivalent), read books for as long as we’ll oblige, and he has a fascination with pulling up my shirt and talking to Baby and trying diligently to feel kicks & wiggles.
Our boy can make anything into a toy, which I know isn’t unique to him but it still cracks me up. So often, even an hour after he’s been in bed, we’ll hear him talking to his hands (usually one is Gabriel and one is Grandmama) and taking them on a bulldozer ride. He has a really active imagination and loves to play with invisible things, which of course keeps me guessing as to what he’s doing or who he’s playing with.
Gabriel loves photography—and I have to say, he’s got talent. He has his own little Fisher Price digital camera, but he much prefers Mommy’s or Grandmama’s real digital cameras. He takes great pictures, centers things, and is actually surprisingly artistic with some of his work. We’ve talked about printing them up into a book for him of his own photography.
Gabriel loves learning. He is going to push me hard as a homeschooling mom, I think! He knows lots of colors and shapes, he knows all his uppercase letters and most of his lowercase letters, and we’re just about to start working hard on numbers now. Although I tried doing some sit-down type preschool things with him when he was 2 ½, I learned that it just wasn’t the right time for us. But now at just over 3, he seems more interested and like it would be something he would truly enjoy. So I am thinking of incorporating some more Totally Tots type things into our life over the next couple of months, and seeing how he likes intentional learning time with Mommy. I think he will enjoy it… but we’ll see how it progresses.
CURRENT ENDEAVORS
Besides getting ready to start some more intentional, purposed learning (I guess you could call it “preschool” but that term sometimes turns me off, honestly) with him—like recognizing numbers, getting more confident with lowercase letters, beginning math, etc—we are currently working on a few other things as well.
Beginning today, we are doing the hard work of giving up thumb-sucking. Ack! It’s a pretty big deal for this mommy actually. We’ve been gearing him up for it over the last week, telling him that we would soon be instituting a rule of “blankie and thumb are only for in bed” (because he only sucks his thumb when he’s got his blankie)—and then today we instituted it. So far he has been very brave and compliant, for which I am so thankful. He likes being a big boy, so he understands that this is one of those steps in growing up. We have been so thankful that Gabriel has been a thumb-sucker (from about three months old!), so it’s hard for me to be excited about asking him to work on giving it up. I realize it will be a process, and it will likely have its ups and downs… unless, of course, it’s as simple as potty training was last winter! God gives great grace even for these “small” things we work through; what a blessing!
Another thing we are working on is speaking to strangers. Gabriel vacillates between two extremes: talking peoples’ heads off and not wanting to respond at all. I know this is very normal for a three year old, but it’s something we are working on balancing. It is another obvious work in progress, and I am thankful that we’ve got a smart, diligent, obedient boy to be working with. That’s another great blessing.
WRAP IT UP
Besides being thankful for Gabriel’s life, curiosity, tenderness, energy, and stamina, we are also thankful for the testimony he is of God’s grace—in our home as well as in public. We prayerfully seek to use this testimony for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom and the glorifying of Him alone. In our home, in our neighborhood, at church, amongst our friends, at the grocery store… in all of these places, we are thankful that God gives us an opportunity to show His faithfulness and kindness simply by having Gabriel’s life present with us. We are thankful that His grace is evidenced in Gabriel’s growth, attitude, vivacity, and demeanor.
As we seek to be good stewards of this tremendous blessing, we are humbled that God has chosen us for this calling. To show God’s covenantal faithfulness to the watching world is humbling to us and glorifying to Him. Thanks be to God!
This morning, Gabriel begged me to climb back into my bed so he could cuddle with me. How could I say no to that?! So instead of getting up and doing my typing, I embraced the moment of cuddles and lovin’ and chatting with my precious little boy. *happy sigh*
After a minute of quiet snuggling, he looked at me and said, “where are my brothers and sisters?” As my eyes filled with tears that I successfully hid from him in the dim room, I said, “most of them live in heaven; one of them lives in my tummy.” He contemplated that for a moment and then responded, “they live with God.” “Yes, they do.” “I will ask God to bring them back to me, Mommy.” I explained to him that it doesn’t work that way, but that someday God will take Gabriel to live in heaven with Him too, and that’s when he will see those brothers and sisters again.
“I love my brothers and sisters,” he said. I cried silently and said, “so does Mommy. We all love them very much.” “God loves them too,” he told me. “Yes, yes He does.”
Then he wanted to wiggle under the covers, rub my belly, and kiss Baby 9 about half a dozen times. He scooted back up to put his head on the pillow next to mine and said, “I love this baby too. He can come out and play. He’s big now.” I explained that this baby wasn’t big enough yet, and that God would keep this baby in Mommy’s tummy until it was big enough to really come out and play. “God won’t take him to heaven?” he asked. I didn’t really know how to answer that. I can not see the future. I do not know how many days are numbered for this child, any more than I know my own. “We pray that God will not take this baby to heaven for a long time; this baby belongs to Him, but sometimes God shows us His love by allowing a baby to stay on earth. Like He did with you.”
There was some silence. Then the thumb popped out of the mouth again, and my sweet Gabriel said, in very quick succession, “I want to pray for God to keep my baby safe. I want to ask God for brothers and sisters. I like brothers and sisters. I love our baby. I don’t want heaven yet, Mommy. I will pray for God to keep us safe.”
And he did.
And I cried because it was beautiful and pure and honest. 
So now, much much later than usual, I am finally sitting down to do my typist work. My schedule is off for the day, but oh how thankful I am that I tossed conventionality out the window this morning and embraced the moment to cuddle with my Gabriel, else I would have missed out on that beautiful conversation with that precious saint whose life and words and prayers glorify our Father in heaven.
For Gabriel’s third birthday party, we did a Kipper theme. Gabriel loves Kipper ~ Kipper is a British cartoon dog character. He watches the Kipper shows on Netflix, has Kipper books and toys, and now a Kipper t-shirt! So anyway, we had a Kipper party. I did what I could (without wanting to spend the big bucks of ordering supplies from England!) to bring Kipper into our party, and stuck with a color theme of orange, white, and brown (like Kipper!) for everything else. Some of us even dressed according to the color scheme for the party. 🙂
At any rate, the party was a hit. So was the kid-friendly food. And although we didn’t end up playing Pin-The-Tail-On-Kipper, doing the Kipper coloring pages I had, or watching one of the birthday episodes of Kipper… it was still pretty well Kipper-saturated, and Gabriel thought it was peachy. And that’s obviously the point.
This morning while I decorated cupcakes, Gabriel enjoyed a breakfast of chocolate milk and a donut topped with mini m&ms. 🙂
I had a good time planning all the set-up, decorations, and necessities. The birthday banner (birthday #3!), paper circle garlands made from orange & brown scrapbook paper hung here & there, orange & white balloons that were decorated with sharpie & pictures of Kipper, bottles of root beer and orange juice boxes (for brown & orange drinks), orange straws (some striped, some solid), bundles of napkins & utensils packaged together with orange & brown scrapbook paper & topped with a Kipper image, a picture of Kipper on the wall, Kipper’s birthday book & Kipper himself set up on the table, etc. And then of course the orange and brown food: grilled cheese sandwiches (on dark brown bread that I colored with molasses, cocoa, and rye), mac & cheese (from the box! <gasp>), orange fruit salad (mandarin oranges, peaches, and cantaloupe), pretzels & Cheetos, and carrot sticks (leftover from my garden last year).
It rained off & on today, but we were able to have some of the party outside: mostly the present-opening and lots of playing.
When we came inside to eat lunch, the kids were going to eat picnic-style on the floor until Grandpapa brought in the birthday gift he made for our boy ~ his very own little table and chairs! What a hit! Gabriel immediately loved it. Now it’s set up in our family room, and I am envisioning all kinds of eating and playing and coloring and homeschooling adventures at this tabletop.
Finally it was cupcake time, although Gabriel was so immersed in playing with new things that he didn’t even want to eat his cupcake until rather a bit later. 😉 Although I had wanted to make some kind of fancy Kipper cake or specially decorated cupcakes (remember the alligator cake from last year??), this was all I had in me to pull off this year. Thankfully Gabriel loved it, simplicity and all. And I was able to bring orange and brown to the cupcakes, and Kipper to the little toothpick flags I made. Perfect. Our little birthday prince thinks so too. xoxo
More to come, after the actual birthday on Monday…
The cupcakes are iced and decorated, and we’re ready to party!!
Gabriel loves to cook dinner for us sometimes.
He was making “sammiches” this time. Pizza and cinnamon roll sammiches. 😀
He even asked us to sit at the table and partake of them together. And of course, he likes to bless the food.
Oh blue-eyed boy, how Mommy loves you!
One thing I spend a lot of time praying about is the discipling I do with my Gabriel. Discipline is obviously important and we spend a lot of time praying about that & implementing that also. But discipling is huge. And I don’t want to limit myself to modern evangelical, super-sappy, watered-down versions of teaching my son about Scripture, about God, about his salvation, about the body of Christ, about theology… This child doesn’t need to be fed watered-down milk. This child needs steak! Obviously not an entire steak thrown in front of him, because he doesn’t necessarily know how to properly wield a steak-knife and fork yet on his own. But I will feed him steak. I will help him cut it into pieces appropriately sized for his ingestion. I will instruct him on how to chew it, what swallowing it does, and how it nourishes our bodies. And of course we might occasionally wash it down with a glass of milk, especially if the steak gets a little too chewy or chunky in the throat. I have no problem with that. (I’m using Hebrews 5:12-14 & 1 Cor 3:2 as some inspiration for the metaphor, in case you didn’t pick up on that yet. 😉 )
But my endeavor, my goal, is to bring my son up on the hearty solid food of the Word. On steak and wine. Not on watered down milky psuedo-Scripture and psuedo-theology.
How that will look over time, I can not precisely tell you at this point. It’s a fluid concept. It will grow as he grows and as I grow (and as we grow as a family).
One way that I am striving to instill good theology into my toddler (who is not yet three years old) is by catechizing him. We are using this catechism right now, and Gabriel is quickly learning the answers; and I love having little discussions with him about it, as we chew and swallow and enjoy and are nourished. On a childlike level of real steak and wine. Little bites. Little sips. But truly nourishing, delicious, and delighting.
Last week Gabriel and I did a special art project one day, producing a piece of artwork for his bedroom as well as one for a gift for Grandpapa’s birthday. Here is a little glimpse into the fun that we had together and the beautiful results!
First we set up the kitchen, using an old shower curtain for a drop cloth. I had bought canvasses at Michael’s cheaply using 50% coupons, and a cheap set of 3 brushes (plus another tiny one we already had), and about 8 different colors of acrylic paints that were about 70 cents each; I used paper plates (styrofoam actually) for palettes, and washed them (and the brushes) between each color. Gabriel wore an old t-shirt of his daddy’s.
Gabriel painted in layers, one color at a time, and we used the hair dryer in between each one to dry them up.
We got to practice our colors, as well as listening to directions. 🙂
Gabriel signed the back of the canvasses.
I used an oil paint Sharpie to write Scriptures on them (and tried to be as artistic as my son had been!).
Psalm 147:1 & 3 on Grandpapa’s ~ we thought it was great for him as a doctor talking about brokenness & healing.
Exodus 15:2 on Gabriel’s ~ we thought this was perfect because Gabriel’s name means “the Lord is my strength” and the description of praising & exalting the God of his fathers perfectly suits our little boy.
Giving Grandpapa his birthday gift!
And we hung Gabriel’s on his bedroom wall above his bed.
