My boys are getting to the stage where they like to argue with each other and (especially in the case of the older one) with us.  If one of them says something, the other one has to take the opposite stance.  And, they will argue it steadfastly until they are blue in the face.

The younger one mostly just argues because that is what he sees from his older brother.  Often, the younger one doesn’t even know what he is arguing about.  So, I have been trying to convince the older one (the boss) that in some cases they just need to agree to disagree and let it go.  However, explaining this simple concept to my 4 year old proved to be virtually impossible.  So, I decided to wait until the next time he took up an argument with me to try to make my point.

Sure enough, a couple times over this last weekend, the boss took up a meaningless argument with me.  In both cases, I cut it off quickly and told him that we would just have to agree to disagree…that we were both entitled to our differing opinions…but that we would have to agree to disagree.

In both cases, he said, “Dad, I am the one who agrees… I agree, but you don’t agree.”

Argggg

So, the arguing continues…

My 4 year old develops new and always fascinating methods of prolonging bedtime.  Last night, even though we let him stay at our neighbors long after his bedtime, and even though his brother was already asleep in the same bedroom, he insisted on saying prayers with me before getting into bed.  Fine – what am I gonna say -  you can’t pray tonight because it’s too late?  No.  So, I whispered a quick prayer and then told him it was his turn.  After quite a long pause, I finally asked him if he was going to pray.  He answered, “I am praying in my mind”.  I said ok.  After another long pause, I finally said, “OK, time to get up into bed and go to sleep, buddy”.  He answered, “No, first I want to pray out of my mind!!!”.

We have a new soccer tot and a new little slugger in our house.  Our 4 year old is the soccer tot and the two year old is the Little Slugger.

We decided to “invest” in activities for our children with some of our tax stimulation money.  They have each been to one session, but both appeared to really enjoy it.

Thanks to my wife for video taping the events so daddy could review after work!

The 2 year old was the example child for the coach.  He was the best at all the various drills they practiced and so she used him repeatedly as the example for the other kids.  He was very anxious to practice with his daddy when I got home!

He’s “The Natural”.

The 4 year old missed the first few sessions (long story) but he didn’t look like he had missed a beat.  He was the best (only) listener in the class and he was the only one to cheer on his teammates when they were running individual drills.

And, he was pretty darn good with the ball.  He excitedly showed me the video when I got home from work.  He explained every drill and walked me through each activity.  Everytime he touched the ball with his hands, he said, “I cheated there, dad”.

He’s the next Pele.

My 4 year old is starting to get quite creative with his bedtime prayers, which is awesome.  Here are a couple of nuggets from the last week or so:

1. Thank you for our mouths so we can eat.
2. Thank you for our shoes so that our feet don’t get burned on the sidewalk.

Everyday it becomes more and more obvious to me why Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me”!

Our 4 year old is still up at the lake with my parents.  He will be there for another 10 days or so.  He is becoming quite the little fisherman.  He called a couple days ago and told us about his catch of 13 fish.  Today he called and had caught 23.  I asked if any of them were big ones.  He said yeah, but some were small and they had to throw them back!

I am glad he is having fun!  But we miss him down here in Texas.

Meanwhile his little brother is spreading his wings a little down here without him.  We purposely waited until this period of time to start potty training him.  And, he is really doing a great job with that.  In a week, he is going pee-pee regularly on the potty now without accidents.  Of course we have to religiously put him on the potty every 45 minutes, but he goes right away when you put him on there.

Poo-poo…so far is a different story!

Our 4 year has had his share of witticisms over the last few days.  Just thought I would share.

Witticism #1

A friend of our boys was playing with them at our house late last week.  They were playing some game in the playroom that required a coach, and our 4year old had designated himself as that coach.  All of a sudden, he took off running to the back of the house as fast as he could.  As he ran around the hallway corner he said, “I’m the coach, and the coach needs to go poop!”

My wife laughed at that little witticism and IM’d me so I could have a chuckle, too.  A few minutes later, he calmly walked out of the bathroom and stated, matter of factly, “The coach is done going poo-poo.”  What a guy!

Witticism #2

I was combing his hair Sunday morning in an effort to get him ready to go to church.  I said to him, “I wish I had hair like yours.”

To which, he replied, “Yea, me, too.”

I said, jokingly, “You already have hair like yours.”

He stated, exasperatedly, “No, not me!  I wish you had hair like mine, too!”

Witticism #3

On the way home from church Sunday afternoon, our boys were telling their cousins about our cabin in Minnesota .  My wife explained to them that our family is going to the cabin in a few weeks, and that our 4 year old is going to stay behind with his grandparents for several more weeks.  Our niece and nephew seemed concerned and in disbelief that we were going to leave our 4year old behind in Minnesota .  So our 4 year old simply stated, “I have to be with my grandparents because I LOVE THEM!!!!”

On the nights I put my boys to bed, I pray this prayer with them:

Dear Lord Jesus,

Thank you for this day.  Thank you so much for all your many many blessings.  Thank you so much for little (4yrold) and little (2yrold) and little (babydueinaugust).  We love our kids soooo much…help them to know how much we love them, Lord.  Help them to know how much you love them, Lord.  Help them to grow and meet their milestones, Lord, on time.  I pray that they would remain happy, healthy, and strong.  And, Lord, above everything else, I pray that they would learn to love you and follow you and know you as their personal Lord and Savior.  And help them to show others around them your love.  Lord, I pray that they would have a good night’s sleep tonight.  Help us to all get the rest that our bodies need.  Help our boys to know that they are safe in their beds tonight.  Amen

At some point during the prayer my 4 yr old always reminds me to pray for his uncle and for whoever else may be on his mind that day and I do that or I pause while he does it himself.  And, my 2 year old usually bows his head and prays “Jesus….food….Amen”.

When I tuck my 4 yr old in bed, I always ask him the following three questions:

Do you know I love you?

Are you going to sleep tight tonight?

Are you going to have sweet dreams?

When I tuck my 2 yr old in, I always say, “You know you got a daddy who loves you?….and, I mean, I love you biiiig time, dude”.

I don’t know why this has become our routine.  But, it has, and I think we all like it.  I know I do.

At lunch we were quizzing our 4 year old on what his Bible verse was in Sunday School today.  It was John 15:12 where Jesus said:

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

After lunch, we had a great chance to live out that verse in front of our 4 year old.  We noticed a man straggling along the road side in the hot sun near the hospital today.  It was hard to tell what he needed, but it wasn’t hard to tell that he needed something.  He looked like he may have just been discharged from the hospital because he had a hospital bracelet around his wrist.  It was possible he was drunk or high or both.  He walked with a noticable limp and seemed to be drifting aimlessly.

We stopped and asked him if he needed anything.  He mumbled that he was fine.  I offered to get him some lunch and he agreed.  I was a little nervous about taking him the car with us, so I asked him where he was going to be for the next few minutes while I went to get him lunch.  He said he would be right there.  So, we ran to McDonald’s and got him a chicken sandwich, a coke, and a large ice water.  We took it back over to him, and by this time I had decided he was harmless (or more accurately, that it was worth the risk to help this man), so I asked him if I could give him a lift somewhere.  He said no.  I asked him what else he needed.  He said he was just waiting it out for 5 days until he got his next check.  I wished him well and we were on our way.

As we pulled away, our 4 year old said, “That was weird.”  My wife and I immediately used this situation as a lesson.  We told him there were countless people that had passed him by just today that could have stopped to help.   We told him that we did what we did because it was the right thing to do and because it is what Jesus would have done.  We told him that Jesus would have already known exactly what that man needed.  We don’t always have that luxury but we can pray and give it our best shot…which is exactly what we had done.  We told him that it may have felt a little weird, but each time we do it, it will feel less weird. And of course, we reminded him of his Bible verse today and showed him how we were living that verse out.

We decided going forward, we would continue to pray for the man.  Though we didn’t know his name, we decided to call him Levi because that was the word written on his shirt.  And we told our son that Jesus would know who we meant when we prayed for Levi.

Looking back now, I realize this is a situation where someone needed help and God placed just the right person in the just the right place at the just the right time to provide that help.

I just pray that we were able to help Levi as much as he helped us.  God knew that our son needed that lesson today and Levi was there to help deliver the message.  God knew that we needed that lesson today, too.

My 4 year old had a few nuggets today.

First, my wife took him to an out of town birthday party for a friend of his that used to live here.  When he got back after being away several hours, he walked right in and handed me a bag of candy from the party.  He said, “Here you go, daddy.  I want you to have this.  You deserve it.”  Isn’t that awesome??

Secondly, on the way home from the party, he was his normal happy self.  Then, all of a sudden, he must have gotten tired because he said to my wife, “Good night, mom”.  She looked back and he was asleep immediately after saying that!

Lastly, this evening I took the boys over to my aunt and uncle’s lake house north of Aubrey.  After announcing to the family that he needed to go poo-poo, he exited stage left to do his business.  After he was in there for a few minutes, I wondered back there to check on him.  I asked him if he was ok, if he needed any help, if he had cleaned up good, if he had washed his hands.  Yes, no, yes, yes were his responses.  As I started to walk away, I heard “WELL DON’T LEAVE ME IN HERE FOREVER!!”.  I turned back and asked him why he didn’t just turn the doorknob and come out and he said “I washed my hands and their wet” (as in duh, daddy, can’t you see that my hands are wet and I can’t turn the knob).

Today at lunch I asked my son what I should blog about today.  He said I should talk about his toy dinosaur, who he has named B-Rex (don’t ask me why).  He said I should talk about B-Rex because B-Rex wants to eat but he can’t because B-Rex is just pretend.

Which leads me to a thought that I often have.  I don’t trust everything scientists tell me.  Why am I expected to take everything a scientist tells me as fact?  My kid is really into dinosaurs and he has books that tell him all about life on this planet as it was x million years ago.  And, everything is written as fact.  When I read these books to him, I always add in the caviet phrase “according to scientists” at the end of each statement that strikes me as utterly unprovable.  I mean, there is no way to prove or disprove some of the statements made, and yet, we are expected to accept all of it as fact.  And, not only that, but we are expected to just start teaching it to our kids.

My son had his 4th birthday party at the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science.  It was a terrific party and he and all his friends had a super time.  (I recommend it if you are looking for a unique party idea for a young child).  But, even there, I remember thinking more than once, “How can they possibly know that?”

And, it certainly isn’t limited to theories on dinosaurs.  I have heard and read all kinds of crazy things stated as fact.  I have heard all about how the planets came to be.  There are detailed accounts of how our own planet has evolved and changed over the millions of years.  Give a scientist a rock and they can tell you its age.  (Carbon dating in particular is something that gets on my nerves because it is so widely accepted as complete and utter fact beyond any possible debate).  They can categorically state when the Artic will run out of ice.  They know how much our climate is warming and can tell us with amazing precision how temperatures will change over the next 10 years, 20 years, etc.

A quick google of “scientists claims” gave me the following results:

Life on Mars Likely, Scientist Claims

Black people ‘less intelligent’ scientist claims

Scientists Claim Infrared Helmet Could Reverse Alzheimer’s Symptoms

Men Smarter than Women, Scientist Claims

And, these are just on the first page!  The list of unbelievable and un-provable claims goes on and on.  (Of course, Men being smarter than Women is really more of a commonly accepted fact than any sort of breakthrough scientific discovery…just kidding).

I remember the exact moment about 5 years ago when I finally decided to officially quit believing anything that was stated in the name of science.  I read a headline that “There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.”  Come on, how in the world can they possibly know that?  And yet the article fully documents the total number of stars in the sky (70 sextillion to be exact) as compared to the much smaller number of grains of sand on the earth, which ironically they don’t even state…it’s as if we are to assume that they have known that all along.  I knew when I read that article that they are completely full of crap.

Don’t get me wrong.  I do think there is validity to a lot of things that scientists discover.  Many advancements and truly proven discoveries have been made in all areas of science.  But, my point is, that our society is expected to just fall in line with whatever is said in the name of science.

Well, I, for one, can’t do that.  In my mind there is always room for other explanations no matter how remote they may be.  For instance, I believe that God created the world.  It is certainly possible that the Grand Canyon was carved into the rock over millions and millions of years by the Colorado river.  But, it is also very possible in my mind that God created the Grand Canyon in just a single instant in all its beauty and glory.  But, I have never heard the latter as a possible explanation to how the Grand Canyon came to be.

It’s possible that Dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago, sure, but isn’t it also possible that God created the world with fossilized dinosaur bones and footprints and even droppings just because He’s God and He can create the world anyway he chooses with dinosaur droppings and all?

I personally think that the Grand Canyon was, in fact, formed over thousands of years and that dinosaurs actually did roam the earth.  But, I would just once like to see scientists to acknowledge that there are other possibilities when they start to make their informed statements of fact.

This entire blog started because my 4 year old said I should talk about his pretend hungry dinosaur.  Here’s hoping he will continue to be interested in dinosaurs.  Here’s hoping he will continue to ask questions that will lead him into a further thirst for truth.  Here’s hoping he will channel his interests and his curiosities into finding out more about this world and how it came into being.  Here’s hoping he will always keep his mind open to a whole “world” of possibilities.