From the Mouths of Babes

I love my kids. I really do. Sometimes kids say the craziest and funniest things. I'm glad since, as most of you with kids know, parenting isn't always a barrel of laughs. I'm convinced my kids will be the best lawyers and politicians out there when they grow up, considering how much time they spend defending themselves against their sister's accusations.

But sometimes they say things that just make me laugh out loud.

A few years back we took Alison to her first day of "school". Her first day was in the second grade (we had homeschooled up to that point and are now back to homeschooling). I'm not sure who was more anxious about school, Alison or us. But obviously, the school, Calvary Chapel Christian School, was excited about the children returning for another year of fun and learning. Evidence of this excitement was in the form of a big banner across the schoolyard that proclaimed "Welcome Back Students". As we pulled in to the parking lot, Kasey, then 4 or 5 and still grasping the finer machinations of the English language, read the banner aloud to us in a rather inquisitive tone "Welcome BLACK Students!?!??" We laughed hard at this, as did the principal, teachers and pastors of the church. It's nice to have innocence in the family.

Another moment of Kasey's exclamations came a couple of years ago. She was working hard on a beautiful necklace that she was making. She was stringing beads on to the necklace when she ran into a problem. She realized that two hands just weren't enough to accomodate this tricky task. The solution: put one end of the necklace in her mouth. This way she had one hand to hold the other end and the other hand could string the beads onto the thread. With the necklace still in her mouth and her hard at work, she proclaimed to me "Oh, my mouth is being SO helpful today!" Yeah Kasey, I have alot of days when I wish my mouth was that helpful too.

But one of the funniest moments came with Alison. It came 4 or 5 years ago when we were trying to explain to her why we, being the "serious" Christians that we are, weren't going to be celebrating Halloween like all the rest of the kids. Now I must confess that I've struggled with this for years. I have a real hard time going along with the whole celebrating Halloween is celebrating the devil stuff. To me, like the kids, Halloween is a day to get one thing - CANDY!!! Yeah, I know the history of how the holiday came into being...blah, blah, blah. But I just don't buy into it lock, stock and barrel. We've come up with a compromise - we now go to one of the area church's "Halloween alternatives" where there are lots of games to be played and candy to be freely given away. However, this particular day we were trying, probably very weakly, to explain to Alison why we weren't going out that year for Halloween. Finally, Alison said in her best unintentional Opie Taylor opine, "I don't like the devil, but I SURE do like candy." The brokenhearted look on her face told me that she understood what we were trying to say. But it made me feel like a heel and a killjoy and I was determined to find a more "acceptable" way to get this child some candy.

Being a parent isn't always fun and it sure isn't easy. When I think back to my parents at this stage in life, it seemed like they knew all the answers and always knew what to do. Why is it, then, that I feel so unprepared to be a dad? Thankfully, the kids bring light moments like these to our lives. And it's in these moments when I realize parenthood is as much a joyful journey as it is a duty and I look forward to all the years I have left being their dad.