Charis Sings to Us

I love it. Up until recently, Charis has known songs only well enough to be able to fill in a few key words when we sang them to her. Now, the tables have turned. Now she sings, "God is so BIG! So strong, so miney, nothing g-God cannot do!" She also likes to sing "This Little Light of Mine," especially where we don't hide it under a bushel or let Satan blow it out. Another favorite is "Happy Birthday"--when we play in the sandbox, she makes a cake and puts it on a plate, then usually sticks a fluffy dandelion in the top for the candle, sings the song, and blows it out. This may explain the proliferation of dandelions in our yard!

Another topic of conversation has been bikes. Charis is getting a Dora the Explorer trike/big wheel for her birthday. We just call it a bike. But now, every night at bedtime, she wants me to tell her stories about bikes. We've had flying bikes and magic bikes, and she also loves to hear about our first bikes. I tell her about how I unwisely decided to ditch my training wheels and rode straight into a hedge, and Abe tells her about when he got his first bike as a kid--he had two to look at; one was a super fast, light bike. He loved it. the other, to hear him tell it, was slow and heavy. Charis' eyes got so wide when he told her it weighed "a thousand pounds." Then he disclosed that he had actually faked falling on the heavy, slow one so his dad wouldn't think it was a good bike for him...unfortunately, that was the very bike his dad decided to purchase. We all laugh. Charis asks for these stories again and again...and she won't even get her bike for another month! Poor soul.

Judah is growing like gangbusters. He says "Uh-oh" a lot, and is very quick to use the sign for "all done" when he's through eating. He is getting so bold and adventuresome--he loves going down the slide, but loves trying to climb up it even more. And swinging--he apparently thinks the higher, the better. He also seems a bit of an alchemist--what happens when I dump dog food into the dog's water? He has become increasingly vocal--we're just not quite sure what it's all about yet.

He is also getting to be a BIG boy. Yesterday, for the first time, I put a pair of Judah's pants on Charis--they seemed a little short, but otherwise, fit fine. All the same, I was surprised that 3T pants were that short--until I looked at the tag and discovered they were not #t, as I had thought, but 18 month pants. I never thought I'd mix up their clothes...