Hairy Arms, Burping Bottoms and Other Fun Stories

Here are a few funny stories from recent days...

One day Ladan was trying to open something that was pretty hard to turn. He said, "Wow, Mom. This is really tough to open." He looked down again at it and said with determination, "Well, I do have hair on my arms, so I must be strong enough to open it." He gave it another try and got it opened... then yelled, "Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!! I did it!!!" FYI--Ladan has a few clear pieces of hair on his arm that can't be more than 1/8 inch in length. Nevertheless, it is there, and apparently it makes him strong like Daddy.

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Last weekend I was watching the MU football game with Ladan. They lost. I told Ladan what happened, and he said, "Well, I guess they'll praise Him." Have you seen Facing the Giants? There is a line in the movie where the coach tells the team that if they win, they'll praise Him [God], and if they lose, they'll praise Him. When Chet came home, Ladan told him that the Missouri Tigers lost and were praising God. Let's hope they were!

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Just yesterday he woke up from his nap and was playing with Gabe. He accidentally tooted. He announced, "Whoops. I just tooted." I asked him if he needed to go to the bathroom. He responded, "No. It's kind of strange. It's almost like my bottom just burped." Nice observation. I replied, "Yes, that's pretty much exactly what it's like. And yes, it is kind of strange."

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Our neighbors are moving back to California and are leaving town tomorrow morning. We're so sad to see them go. I don't think I'll ever take for granted the days we've had with them right next door. Over the course of the last few days, their two little girls have been playing at our house a lot so Glen and Jessica can pack. Ladan and Hannah (who will be 3 in February) have been playing a lot of house. Ladan has a small tent set up in his room right now. It's a 3x3 foot tent with mesh walls so you can look in easily. They have the kid-sized lawn chairs set up inside the tent. Many times over the course of these days, Ladan and Hannah have gone into their house to sit together. It's really funny because they just sit there for up to 15 minutes at a time just talking and doing nothing else. It's like they're an old couple just chilling out on the screened-in porch chatting the day away.

They have taken their "kid" (a small snowman made out of a tube sock) to school. Hannah sits on the little riding toy holding the "kid", and Ladan pushes them to school. They drop the kid off, and then come back down the hallway to do something else for a while. Inevitably, they remember their kid and go back to get her from school.

At one point, Gabe tried to walk into the tent while Hannah and Ladan were sitting in their chairs. Hannah said, "No, Gabe. You can't come in the house right now, son." Awesome!

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We put our Christmas tree up after we ate our Thanksgiving dinner. Ladan has been so excited about it and keeps shouting out, "It's Christmas in our house!" He tells me regularly that he just loves Christmas and is so glad that it's Christmas in our house.

Amber, my sister-in-law, made us a set of ornaments last year that have different names of Jesus on them. Each one has a name that Scripture uses to refer to Jesus as well as the Scripture reference where we can read about it. There are 25 of them, so we do one each day, reading the scripture and talking about what it means when we refer to Jesus as ___________. Ladan has been having fun trying to read the names of Jesus on the ornaments. He gets some of them right off, and some (like "The One Mediator") are a bit more challenging.

One of the ornaments reads "Man from Heaven". It was the first one we did. When Ladan woke up the next day and came to the tree to try to read it, he said, "Man... (insert long pause) who goes to college." I helped him figure it out and he now gets it every time, but I thought his original version was pretty great!

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Gabe has been pretty funny lately too. He's starting to use all kind of fun phrases. Today I was wiping the oatmeal off his chin, and he said, "Oh my goodness. I'm messy."

When he does something wrong to Ladan, he says, "Foddy, Nanan" (Sorry, Ladan).

His favorite game is to wait for someone to get up from his/her seat, RUN over, climb into the vacated seat, and yell, "You get out of my seat!" This game NEVER gets old for Gabe and is a constant source of entertainment for him.

We got the following message from one of Gabe's Sunday School teachers a few weeks ago:

"... one of the parents asked us if we were teaching the kids to kneel or bow down when we pray...if you have noticed your kids wanting to do this when you pray at home it is not because we have taught them to do this. Although, at some point one of the kids just decided to lay face down when we started to pray and the power of influence on kids is I guess pretty big, because when we pray in Sunday school, most of the kids will now lay face down. So if you are wondering what your child is doing, that's the explanation!"

Can you even imagine a room full of two-year-olds laying face-down on the ground during prayer time? I so wish I could see it!

Well, that's all for now! Chet finished his classes for the semester, so I'll try to get better at posting more regularly again. Please be praying for us as we make all kinds of decisions in the next little while!