modesty in children

The clothing manufacturers make even toddler sizes too tight or something because Hannah's not quite tall enough for size 4 pants, but size 3 is too tight around her legs and toddler belly. Her shirts fit better around her as a 4 as well, we don't want to start anything now that we'll have to correct later when she's wanting to pick out her own clothes. Speaking of modesty. Laura shopped at a consignment sale and was shocked to find the stylish choices available for someone Hannah's size. With ribbon around the bust line resembling an adult’s blouse that Laura wouldn't feel entirely modest wearing, some of the outfits for a preschooler were quite outrageous.

However, one seemingly innocent choice became one of the lost items soon after buying it. Even though we don't own any of the Disney Princess movies, we have several princess items to play with. So when Laura found a pj set with Jasmine on it for $1 that went in the pile of good deals and came home. When Hannah picked it out to wear one night because it was purple, her favorite color, Forest was surprised it made it into our wardrobe. He asked Laura and there was a moment of confusion followed by a moment of "duh". In protecting our daughter's modesty, we cannot only think of how much of her body is covered--the pj's in question were long sleeved and big enough to not be too tight. We must also think of the images she sees on her clothes and toys. Jasmine wears hardly anything on top and it just slipped past Laura's view, because she was more focused on it being a cheap set of pj's than what was on them.

We also must begin even now to guard our son's heart and mind against immodesty in the girls he admires--if we allow Hannah to wear the shirt with the scantily clad princess, will he be drawn to scantily clad women as a man? A princess is to be desired, should he desire one who dresses this way? It was good to have this inexpensive goof, it was good to be reminded in every area we must be thinking of how we parent our children does not just affect their behavior now or in the very near future, but we are laying the foundation of their thought patterns and behaviors now. If we allow them to disrespect their siblings now with an angry tone, they will disrespect others later. If we allow laziness now with schoolwork (whether homeschooling or not) they will be lazy workers as adults. What do we want most for our children? The same we want for ourselves: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever! So in all we do, "work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord [we] will receive the inheritance as [our] reward. [We] are serving the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:23, 24).

So much happening

Our little family never has a dull moment! Right now Talitha is trying to cram her tiny body inside a plastic shoe box that the "bumpy legos" go in that her brother and sister are building with. She is having fun playing more and more, and can ask for some of her favorite activities--like the "boosh" game with Daddy flips the kiddos upside down with his legs while he's sitting in the recliner. She wants to do everything the bigger kids are doing--like when Daddy drew smileys on their hands she threw a fit till Daddy did it for her too. Then a couple nights later she swiped his pen from his shirt pocket and tried to draw on her hand herself. When she hears it's time to go, she'll run to retrieve shoes and point at her jacket on the hook till we're all ready to go. If you even whisper the word bath in conversation she'll start to run to the tub and bang on it waiting to get in. She loves to climb and talks all the time, though still only has a few words that can be understood consistently. She wants to walk down the stairs all by herself, but her cute little legs are the same height as the steps (just about) and she still needs lots of help.

Hannah is working on using the potty, rather than pull-ups. It usually goes better when we're out than at home. Just too much going on here to want to stop and use the potty, much easier to just go where she's playing. But if we're out she'll say she has to use the potty because then whatever we're doing that is uninteresting becomes about her rather than about anyone else. She loves doing schoolwork just like her big brother. Though sometimes he finds her activity more interesting than his own handwriting practice. Pretty soon she'll move to a big girl bed rather than crib since we'll be making room for her baby brother.

Nathanael is all boy still. His little legs and elbows are all bruises from his "cool moves" that he loves to do. He likes to just throw himself on the floor or do a flip and crash on the ground. We're thinking maybe a gymnastics class would be a good way to harness that energy and still get to do "cool moves" safely for his body. He still loves to do schoolwork too, and doesn't understand why on Saturday or Sunday he doesn't always have to do any, and will ask to do some. Hopefully if Laura can keep some reserve school activities for those Saturdays at least he'll continue to love to do schoolwork later as much as he does now. However, on Sunday, we all take a day of rest, just like God did after creating everything. Whenever possible we all take a nap on Sunday too, though the girls don't always let Mom and Dad. Nathanael doesn't take a nap every day now, just those days he shows he needs it, like when he's sick, or didn't get enough sleep the night before and is having a hard time remembering to obey. So rest-time is not so much of a struggle for him lately now that he is a bigger boy that doesn't need a nap every day. He really knows his body too. After being on asthma controlling medication, he hasn't gotten a cold that required him to have breathing treatments. Until last week he woke up saying he needed his medicine to breathe better. Sure enough he had a slight wheeze and began coughing regularly again. The fever later proved it was a sickness inducing the breathing difficulties, but he realized he needed the medicine. Now he's just left with a bit of a cough but he is "all better now".

Laura is getting so big now in pregnancy that several people have commented on her size. In one week she had three random people ask if she was having the baby in the next few days. Unfortunately for them she was only in her 28th week of pregnancy at the time, and not anywhere close to the due date at 40 weeks which is May 19-ish. For quite some time Laura has been saying this baby feels bigger than the others, but in reality he's not probably any bigger. She's just been in her maternity clothes so often that they have shrunken, maybe. Oh, and from behind you can't tell she's even carrying a baby in there, it's not till she turns around that you realize, "wow! she's pregnant!" Exactly like Nathanael's pregnancy, just a basketball in her tummy, not like the girls where weight was gained everywhere. So for our family, the old wives tale is holding true.

Forest has almost got us a house! We should close on it the 22nd!! That is the most exciting and stressful thing he's been working on lately. We ended up not getting the house we posted pictures of. A friend at church was called to a new church in Georgia and needed to sell their house, and it happened to be move-in-ready (minus a couple buckets of paint to make it our own) and a great size for our family. The only thing is, it's in Indiana. For those of you who are not familiar with our area, we live just south of Indiana, separated only by the Ohio river. We often eat out and shop in Indiana, actually, since where we live in Kentucky is close to the river. So even though we're moving to another state, it still feels like we are just moving across town, with the exception of becoming Indiana residents, rather than Kentucky ones. So with Laura 8 months pregnant, we'll be moving to a new home, and changing over all our information to a new state. Should be fun! We love it here and look forward to moving for the last time. We've had 5 homes already in our almost 6 years of marriage, 3 of those just in Louisville.