(And All My) Work Be Praise

After seeing a few bean-bag activity ideas on various blogs, I decided we needed some.  Have you looked into buying bean bags?  They seemed awfully expensive to me, even on Amazon, given the simplicity of the object.  So, I called my local sew-er (that is, my mother-in-law) and respectfully made my request.  A week later, she stopped by with six denim bean bags, complete with personalized stitching thanks to her fancy machine!  (Don't tell her she left "t" out of the alphabet on two of them.) Levi and I have used them for two activities so far.  The first is the one that got me wanting bean bags in the first place, but I've looked everywhere and can't find the original blog post.  (If this activity was your idea, please let me know!)  I simply used masking tape to outline some shapes on the floor and had him throw the bag to the shape I called.  He knows his shapes just fine; I was hoping for a gross motor activity, but he'd just walk up ...

Levi and I had one really bad day this week.  It was only half a day, really, but compared to our normally rather peaceful days, it was bad .  I know in my head that his defiant "NO, Mommy" and his refusal to obey on things I thought we'd conquered months ago and his naptime shenanigans are merely the combination of innocent toddler-hood and sinful human nature, but on this particular day, I was angry.  "How dare you wake up your brother" angry.   "You MUST obey"  through clenched teeth angry. When I realized that I was actually looking for reasons to punish  (not discipline) him rather harshly -- trying to enforce rules that hadn't been in place previously -- my oh-so-angry heart sank.  Make a quick mental list of all of the ways parents are NOT supposed to treat their children; I'd violated every one in the space of a few hours.  And in an instant, I knew what he'd needed all along: a little more attention, a little more patience, a who...

I was just working on my Bible study  homework.  We're studying "Acts and the Epistles" this year, and this week we're in 1 Thessalonians.  I was so struck by this verse (NIV) that I had to share it right away: "We continually remember before our God and Father . . . your work produced by faith . . .  your labor prompted by love . . .  and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. " Faithful work, loving labor, and hopeful endurance: how I would love to be characterized by such things.  What noble pursuits.

I have tried to be really deliberate about doing purposeful activities with the boys (mainly Levi), scheduling out two a week, but most weeks I forget about it entirely until we all get bored and I'm desperate for a change of pace.  Such was the case one afternoon this week: after our post-nap snack, we simply needed something new to do! Levi was content to get out the playdough . . . making numbers out of rolls of dough . . .  and pressing shapes . . .   . . . so I whipped up an activity for Owen I'd been contemplating for a while (based on dozens of ideas from blogs and pinterest).  I cut several holes in the lid of an old peanut container, loaded up a plastic bowl with fuzzy pom-poms, and showed him how to push them in. Owen was willing to do this about one and a half times before he was more interested in dumping the bowl of pom-poms on the ground.  Levi, however, begged and begged to have a turn, so I eventually released Owen from the high c...

Jenny made Levi and Owen some adorable felt food for Christmas.  (I knew she was crafty -- you should've seen our room sophomore year, all decorated in construction paper -- but I had no idea she could sew!)  This was our first introduction to play kitchen items (beyond my handing the boys pots and pans and spoons in the real kitchen), so I wasn't quite sure what we'd do with it at first.  In fact, when Levi decided immediately upon opening that the eggs, bacon, grapes, and kiwi slices belonged on the Christmas tree, we left them there! But the tree came down this week, and when I remembered that I'd propped it up on a big Pampers box, I had a sudden brainstorm: cover it in brown paper and draw some burners on it!  And so that's precisely what I did.  It's not fancy, and it likely won't last long (particularly with the destructive nature of my second son), but I'm awfully proud of myself for being creative, recycling items I already had, and giving th...

We had a really great New Year's weekend!   My friend Jen  and her husband Jon and I have celebrated the holiday together nearly every year since 2002 (or would that be 2003?).  The few years we've missed have been largely my fault, for such inexcusable life events as my honeymoon and having a brand-new baby.  This year Jenny, Jon, and their 2-1/2-year-old Caleb were able to stay at our home for three nights!  Unfortunately, it turned out to be three solid nights of Owen coughing himself awake every hour, but we all napped when necessary and managed to stay up late every night anyway.  Good food always helps, of course, and here's a run-down of (most of) what we ate: Cheesy Bacon Pull-apart Biscuits   [Five stars.  But then Pillsbury refrigerated dough makes anything good.  A VERY special treat for those of us who try to avoid cans and boxes whenever possible.] Cinnamon Griddle Cakes (without the icing) [Five stars, in my opinion.  Q...

It's an interesting time of life, to be a young family without any set traditions of one's own.  Isaac's family has theirs, and my family has ours, but we've yet to develop "The Traditions of the Isaac Gould household."  As our boys are starting to understand the world around them more and more, we've been talking a lot about how we want to shape the special events of life within our family. The focused conversations started about six months ago, when I stumbled across a blog post (which of course I can't find now) by someone who had chosen to exchange Christmas presents at Thanksgiving.  The basic idea was that when we save presents for Christmas Day, that becomes the climax of the Christmas season.  No matter how much we talk about Advent and Jesus and the spiritual things of the season, everything is still building towards opening gifts on Christmas morning.  Gifts are good and have their place, but removing them from the end of the season might t...