While adults are often messy, these kids give us smiles and joy day after day. There are a few good things as of late that need not be forgotten.
There are a lot of babies in our lives right now, and six more on the way in the next seven months!
While calling Bingo every Thursday, I try to make sure there is a baby in my arms. While I look overly focused on calling numbers and maintaining my sanity–forty or so adults and children playing Bingo in a hot community space while the young kids shout in a tent and play trains in a bit chaotic, to say the least–look at this baby’s sweet face!
And with babies come older siblings with lots of responsibility. The newest tactic is to place the baby in a tire in our driveway, where they can’t escape, and then the sibling is left to play. I came outside one afternoon to three tires full of babies and no adult or older sibling in sight! They were off playing hide & go seek.
In this photo below, the top child is actually a baby, unable to get out of the tire. The child on the bottom is three and just climbed in to join the fun!
Sometimes it’s an adoring older cousin, too.
House Church has been fun lately as we’ve been going through the Gospels. We’ve tried to come up with ways to make the stories more tangible, including a snack of five loaves and two fish–
–and planting cilantro or flower seeds in good soil. We also taught the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume last week and gave each person a small perfume bottle. Which was very popular with them, but less popular with our own noses. Whoa.
The kids have been asking to help more in the kitchen and house, so the past two Saturdays have found them chopping vegetables in the kitchen. The first week they helped me make a tomato-pumpkin pasta for the band at our OneHouse worship night.
The second we we made chicken pot pies for us to take to a family for dinner and drop a second one by a family with a newborn. They certainly love to help, and they don’t mind having to wash their hands when our soap smells like oranges. And I don’t mind having help to chop a pile of vegetables when their hands are clean 🙂 The littlest sibling doesn’t mind it either. Who wouldn’t want to come to the house where they let you stand on chairs to see what is going on?
Pretty thankful to practice language and love on kids in a way that makes us all smile!
