Through the eyes of a child

It is hard to remember what it was like to look at the world and new things from the eyes of a child.  Everyday seems so busy with everything going on that you start to lose track of time, you get a little older and a little more jaded and a little less willing to stop and enjoy things.  I have to constantly remind myself that they are kids and they need to act like kids and not have to comply to all my "rules" I would like to impose on them to make my life easier.  So after my run yesterday, I took some time and spent it in the backyard with Abby, Chloe and Lawson and just watched them for a while as they played.

Lawson had Cheetos stains all over him from lunch and was just crawling around the grass, eating grass, and having a great time familiarizing himself with the great outdoors.  Abby was standing there and all off the sudden quickly looked to me, looked back up to the sky and said, "oh my goodness!"  She and Chloe with as much enthusiasm as the most fanatical fan in a sports arena, waved, greeted, and danced for the airplane passing over head.  As  it faded off out of sight they just kept waving saying, "bye bye airplane".  It's hard to remember the last time I got that excited about something, but I am going to make the effort to do so because it looked like so much fun.

At the age of 2 they have not learned all the dangers that are out there even in our backyard, but their ignorance led to a fun encounter with a bug that in the near future they will not be so open and willing to engage with.  Chloe had found a beetle crawling around in the grass and without pause picked it up and brought it to me stating that she had found a ladybug.  I figure if it had not bitten her by now it wasn't going to so I went with the ladybug thing and they had a great time throwing the beetle up in the air over and over trying to make the poor creature fly. 

Later we discovered that a bird had built its nest between the posts in our fence and when we went to look closer there were 2 tiny eggs in the nest.  I did have a conversation about not touching the eggs, but I told them we would go look every day until the baby birds were born.  To say they were intrigued is an understatement, they wanted to look at those eggs over and over.  I just pray when Lily is looking at it she doesn't start asking about birds and bees.....if you know what I mean.

One thing God did not build into the eyes of a child is a sense of clothes coordination.  We were getting ready to go to dinner last night and asked Lily to get her shoes on, and she shows up at the top of the stairs wearing white shorts, a matching shirt, and her rain boots.  She stated she was not sure what shoes to wear so would these be okay to wear?  Now I'm okay with letting them express themselves while playing around the house, but this was just embarassing even for me. 

Once again, my kids are teaching me lessons far more valuable than some of the lessons I try to force upon them.  Hopefully as this day gets going and I'm dealing with everything else that makes up our day, I will try to remember to have as much enthusiasm and fun as they do.

As a quick note, Lawson is a big fan of Blue Goose Mexican Cantina and I call "not it" on his impending diaper this morning.

Have a great day!

Jeff, Kasey, Lily, Abby, Chloe and Lawson Boy