When I Grow Up I Wanna Be A...

Sometimes I look at my kids and I wonder what they're going to be when they grow up. Right now, they're full of such potential - they're blank slates. As the years pass they will learn new things, be influenced by friends, teachers, and role models, have successes and failures which will all shape who they become. Also, God has placed unique gifts, like little neatly wrapped presents, inside each one of them that will be revealed as they mature.

Every night before Jason and I go to bed we go in their rooms and check on them. As I watch them sleeping I pray for them and their futures. And then I wonder...

Will Jackson become a world famous chef? Jackson is full of culinary creativity. Tonight he was having a sandwich for supper and wanted Jason to mix together mustard and ranch dressing as his spread. Jason said that it was actually pretty good, and he wants to market it as "rustard". We'll keep you updated on the product development. Here he is cooking pancakes at the beach:and making a birthday cake for daddy:

Of course if you asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, he would probably tell you "a superhero-secret-spy-astronaut, and I'm going to save the Earth from an asteroid". He does make a great superhero. He pretends to be one all the time. He loves helping Selah and saving her from impending dangers, and he also loves "fighting the bad guys."

Here you can see that he has fashioned a computer eye patch (similar to the bionic woman) to help him in his secret spy work.

He would probably be just as happy to be a comedian, because he loves being silly and making people laugh. Case in point:

One Sunday he asked Jason to give him "crazy hair." Jason gladly obliged his request and spiked his hair (probably having a little bit of a father moment that his son wanted to be like him...sniff, sniff). When he got home from church he was so sad. When we asked him why he was upset he said it was because no one had laughed at his hair. Everyone thought it was cool, and he wanted it to be funny. I then told him that I didn't think it was cool; I thought it was very funny and crazy.

Selah, on the other hand, is a different case. She's still so little, it's hard to tell what she has an affinity for yet. Here are my best guesses:

She could be a singer. She loves music and will definitely "sing along" when I'm singing.

I can also see her being a great book critic, combining two of her loves: books and being cranky and hard to please.

Right now, though, she's focusing her energies on becoming a consumer product safety tester, especially in the division of product durability when dropped from various heights on various surfaces. One of her favorite pass times is playing what Jackson calls "the gravity game" (what happens when I drop this object?) Her favorite version of this game is dropping her sippy cup from high-chair height. However, she also loves to dump crayons out of the box from seated-on-the-floor height, and just today pulled a whole shelf of CDs into the floor of our local Christian bookstore from pulled-to-standing height. It's a career that involves a lot of research, but she's willing to do what it takes!

Who knows what they will become? My prayer for them is that, no matter what career they choose, they will be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled people who have a personal relationship with God and visit their mother often!

The TV Pass

Lately, life has been happening too fast for me to blog about! Since it has been almost a month since my last entry, I decided to ease myself back into the blogging pool with a small entry rather than diving into the deep end trying to document everything we've done in the last month. So, here goes!

I think I've mentioned before that Jackson has a bit of an affinity for watching TV. That's putting it way too mildly! I really don't exactly know how we got from my staunch position of "kids should not watch very much TV at all; it only leads to attention deficit disorder" to my lackadaisical daily offer of "Jackson, do you want to watch TV while I do xyz?" When Jackson was born everyone raved about the Baby Einstein DVDs that were supposed to make your kid do something ridiculous like do geometry at the tender age of 9 months. I was vehemently opposed to such garbage citing research about PET scans of kids' brains while watching these supposedly educational DVDs showing brain activity only in the visual reception areas. You get my point. I certainly didn't want my kid to be a TV junkie. Yet here we are. It's been a slippery slope with Selah's birth and us starting a church (and having a lot of meetings at night) certainly being two major contributing factors. Jackson could watch TV all day long if I let him. I don't let him, but I do allow way more TV than I ever thought I would. I have been guilt ridden about it lately and have been wanting to make a change, but honestly I think I'm just as addicted to him watching TV as he is!

I don't mind Jackson watching a little TV, but recently he has been using TV as a first resort when he's bored or when I'm not available to play with him. As soon as I go to put Selah down for a nap or cook supper, the TV comes on (yes, he knows how to turn on the TV and change the channel to three different cartoon stations by himself). I want him to be able to play independently. Enter....THE TV PASS.

Now I know I'm not the first mom to think of this idea, but I decided I wanted to limit Jackson's TV watching and computer playtime, yet give him ownership in his decisions and budgeting of his time. I took some paint color sample cards and wrote "TV" and "computer" on them with a silver sharpie. Then I glued the cards to some clothespins (or as Jackson says "nosepins"). I clipped the cards to a door hanger that we had leftover from a dismantled craft, and voila!...we have TV passes. He can watch 3 shows per day and have one 30-minute playtime on the computer. He gets to choose what to watch (within reason) and when to watch. I try not to judge his decisions, but occasionally I will offer a little guidance like, "OK, Jackson, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has gone off. Do you want to use another TV pass to watch the next show or do you want to save it to watch Scooby Doo tonight?" When he's used a pass, I just turn it over. So far, it has worked beautifully! It has taken my emotions out of the equation. I don't feel like a good or bad mom when I let him or don't let him watch TV, because the decisions are his. He has not complained one time about not having enough passes or not getting to watch TV. I am very proud of him, and, to be honest, I'm proud of myself, too. We're getting back on track, and it feels good!