Getting to Know My Boys

It is Sunday afternoon and I am enjoying a few quiet moments while the boys are sleeping. We all went to church today for the first time since Jaron was born to listen to Jason preach. While Jason did a great job (you can visit www.2020circle.com to listen to his sermon) we were all exhausted from the energy it took. Josiah, while eating his lunch, started making up a song about how he was tired and it was time to take a nap. Once he went down, Jaron woke up to eat and play and I have been spending the past 2 hours trying to get him to go to sleep. Too much stimulation from church has made it difficult for him to sleep. So while I have been trying to calm my newborn I have been thinking about the my life since Jaron was born. For the past couple of weeks I feel I have been living in survival mode, just surviving from one feeding to the next, while trying to spend time with Josiah and attend to household chores. But the past couple of nights Jaron has been sleeping a lot better and I have awaken from my walking zombie state. Now that I am awake I realize that Josiah has changed a lot over the past month, and despite the fact that I spend most of my time with Jaron I haven't deliberately tried to get to know him. Now I want to take a more proactive approach to parenting. For the next couple of weeks I am going to limit the amount of activities I am going to and I am taking the time to get to know my children better and how I can best love and appreciate them. I am going to start a journal and write about the different things I notice about them. I plan to use it as a reference to help me plan how to better care for them.

Here are some things I have already noticed:

1. Jaron is sensitive to too much stimulation. I am going to have limit what I can take him to until he matures more.

2. When Jaron is awake he likes it when you whisper to him and have your face close enough to where he can see you.

3. Josiah is in the "why" stage and is curious about everything, especially animals and cars. I need to start coming up with creative ways to channel his curiosity such as trips to the library to get books on these topics.

4. Today I realized that Josiah is a born leader even at the age of 2. He has a great ability to get people involved in whatever he is doing and make people feel great for being involved in the activity. For instance, today at church Josiah, Jaron and I sat "training room." It is a room in the back behind a glass window that has a speaker so you can take your noisy kids back there and train them how to not be noisy while still being able to hear what is going on in the auditorium. I decided to sit back there to decrease the amount of germs and stimulation Jaron would be exposed to. There is also a bathroom in the training room. Right before Jason started to speak, he lead the congregation in singing a "Firm Foundation", one of Josiah's favorite songs. A 7 year old boy named Brennen came walking in to use the bathroom. The bathroom was already occupied so he sat next to Josiah to wait. Josiah turned to him, "You have to sing." The boy smiled at Josiah but didn't sing. "No, you have to sing," Josiah insisted. The boy started singing softly, mostly to appease Josiah. However, the excitement Josiah had in singing his favorite song carried over to the boy and he started singing louder, smiling, and started swaying to the beat.

I look forward to understanding and getting to know my boys more over the next few weeks. I pray that God will give me wisdom and insight into raising them to be the men God desires them to be.