Strawberries and Moon Sand

Silas has entered a new "phase" that has been a bit difficult lately. He's adjusting to our new life with Evie and this adjustment is manifesting itself in behaviors that are not good.  Mostly it's in the form of extreme disobedience.  He also gets upset with me and treats me "ugly."  Thankfully he LOVES his little sister and has never been mean to her - I'd much rather him be ugly to me - I can handle it. 

Last Tuesday was a TERRIBLE day.  I don't even remember what started it all (it's always something very small) but he was crazy bad all day.  He yelled and threw fits and threw tows and refused to obey me no matter what it was I asked him to do/not do.  By the end of it all I was yelling too and it was just UGLY all around.  NOT our finest moment.  This parenting thing is not always a piece of cake. {insert "duh!" here}

Silas is learning about consequences to his actions and discipline.  He gets time-outs and loss of privileges and spankings (when necessary).  Our approach to discipline is that we don't want to teach him to just change his behavior and do what is "right" because he doesn't want the consequence - we want to teach him about his heart and help him figure out why he is acting the way he is in the first place.  We want him to learn that his heart is where everything starts. The same way the Lord doesn't just want us to do the right things - he wants our hearts to be right too. That means lots of conversations.  It also means frustration on our part sometimes because it is hard to talk about these things with a not-yet-three year old who has the attention span of a gnat.  But we are committed to "training him up in the way he should go" and are praying for grace and patience as we work with him. Justin had a long talk with him that night about respecting and obeying me.

{The Lord is showing me so much about my own heart through all of this.  I'm so grateful that His patience with me NEVER runs out!}

Another thing that we have noticed with him is that he acts out when he gets bored. After the LONG hard day last Tuesday I decided that we needed a fun day with lots of activities. I was kinda scared to wake up and face the day on Wednesday because I really didn't want another day like Tuesday, but the morning came. Justin prayed over the house before he left for work and left me a sweet note to encourage me. When the kids were up and fed, we loaded up and went to Southern Belle Farm to pick a gallon of fresh strawberries.  It was a GORGEOUS day, but it was chilly and very windy.  I forgot to check and make sure that the stroller was still in the van for Evie and when we got there I saw that it was not.  I didn't have our Moby Wrap either so I had to hold Evie the whole time.  She was perfectly fine, but it takes a while to pick a whole gallon of berries and by the end I thought my left arm and wrist were going to fall off! :)  

Silas did great picking the ripe berries for awhile and then he got bored and I looked up to find this:

He decided he couldn't wait until we got home to dive into them.  I can't blame him - I don't even really eat strawberries but they smelled so good I kinda wanted to munch on some right then too. :-) He was a very good boy the whole morning.

After lunch and nap, we went outside and made some Moon Sand.

I found the recipe on Pinterest (there are several different ones floating around) but this is the one I used:

8 cups of All Purpose flour

1 cup of baby or Canola oil (we used canola because that's all we had)

I don't know why flour and oil make the best stuff ever, but it does, and we had a BLAST playing with it. It holds it's form well so we made sandcastles and snowballs and used all kinds of molds.  It held his attention for nearly 2 hours and that is unheard of around here! 

After we cleaned up and went inside to get dinner ready, we turned on VeggieTales music and sang and danced all around the kitchen.  It was one of the best days that we have ever had.  We both had so much fun and I could tell that he was working SO hard at obeying me and choosing to be loving and respectful. 

The rest of last week and this week have been much better with him.  There are obviously still moments that make me want to pull my hair out, but he is trying and learning and so am I and for that I am grateful.

I love this little man - no matter what. :-)

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and the list continues:

69. celebrating one month of life outside the womb for our Evie girl

70. dinner outside

71. that He has a plan

72. Silas telling me the story of Jonah almost verbatim "You can run away from God, but He will always come and find you." (Jesus Storybook Bible)

73. homemade pralines from a sweet friend

74. two fat robins splashing in the birdbath

75. todays that are infinitely better than yesterdays

76. Silas working very hard to be obedient

77. strawberry pickin'

78. looking up to find that Silas decided to eat a strawberry in the patch and his mouth is covered

79. moon sand and my little man's imagination

80. dancing and singing to VeggieTales in the living room with BOTH my babies

81. knowing that He came through for us - answered prayers

82. being encouraged

83. sweet, much needed, uplifting words from Magda

84. homemade frozen gumbo thawed for dinner

85. Evie's bilirubin count coming back normal 

86. fat robins splashing in the bath (apparently I really like this one since it's on here twice!)

87. the grace to hold my tongue when I want to lash out at incompetent people

88. Evie's smiles (especially at 5am feedings)

89. snuggling with Silas while he napped

90. that His patience with me never falters