Songs, questions and sneakiness

JUNE:

When we were singing the song “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” and Strider kept asking me questions about it… At first they were easy, like “Don’t the lions and the tigers bite Him when they’re in His hands?”  But they got harder… like “How do His hands not get sticky when He holds all the soap in His hands?”  Hmmm….

Rayna now has 4 songs that she “requests.”  The code is:  If she says “joy joy”, then she wants “I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, …”  If she waves her finger around, it’s “This Little Light of Mine.”  If she puts her 2 index fingers together, it’s for “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and if she waves both her hands around, either with fingers splayed out,or in fists, then it’s “The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock.”  It takes a discerning observer to know which one’s which!

The other day I was trying to write something down and Strider kept peppering me with questions, to the point that I finally said in exasperation: “Strider, you’re going to have to stop talking because I’m writing and I can’t do two things at once.”  To which he smugly replied, “Rachael Ray can!”  (When we had watched “30 Minute Meals” a few weeks ago, we noted how she was good at doing so many things at once…  I think she’s his hero!)

Rayna is getting pretty sly these days.  When Strider was playing with his “little people” the other day, she sat and watched him quietly for a few minutes, then slowly crept up and snatched one of them.  She frantically crawled away laughing, and then ended up dropping the person, but still ran away giggling!

Strider announced the other day to Pete that he wanted to go to “McDoniels.”  Pete asked him what he wanted to eat there and Strider said “a banana.”  Pete told him they didn’t have bananas, so Strider said, “Ok, then grilled cheese.”  Pete told him they didn’t have that either, so Strider finally asked, “Well what DO they have??”  Pete said a cheeseburger, and Strider said, “Oooh, that would be yummy!”  

Dressing up as mice

Letter "M" day!

AUGUST: 

Rayna is still the dancing queen here…  She is always going over to turn on whatever music she can reach, and then just bops around incessantly.  Even if she hears music in the car, the top half of her is wildly dancing away!  She also likes certain cell phone rings – they get her up and dancing immediately.  I think she could dance all day!

Strider is still mind-boggled by the concept that God has the whole world in His hands…  Now he wants to know how God makes food to eat, when his hands are busy.

The other day I saw Rayna come out of Strider’s room looking very suspicious holding an empty cup that I knew had formerly contained water.  “Uh oh,” I said, “we’d better clean up that water!”  But then Strider quickly said, “No Mom, I already cleaned it up earlier when she spilled it.”  I couldn’t quite believe this was true, so I asked him to show me how he did that.  He led me to the linen closet where he showed me how he had stood up tall to reach a towel… Turning around to see my face that was showing surprise, he grinned and said, “I’m just getting a little bit big!”

Speaking of Rayna acting suspiciously…. she likes to act all sneaky (like pretending she’s not about to dart out of the room by walking slowly sideways until she’s out of the line of sight and then turning and running out) but she also likes us to know when she “gets away with something.”  Even if we try to ignore the 37^th time she does the same thing she’s already been punished for 36 times, she’ll keep coming closer and closer to us until eventually she’s waving the evidence of her misdemeanor in our faces, as if to say, “Helloooo… Aren’t you going to do something about this??”

At her 2nd birthday party

But she’s also getting quite sweet…  Now whenever I pick her up she gets a big smile, looks me right in the eyes, says “HI!” and then kisses me on the cheek!  I love it…