My Little Boy

Daniel had a birthday not too long ago and it's hard to believe that I have a 3 year old...but I do!

Daniel is turning into quite the fun little boy. He's lost much of his babyish looks and he certainly talks up a storm! He has developed quite an imagination and it's fun to have him say, "Mama, let's 'tend this, that's a good idea isn't it?" I think his middle name is play! His favorite color is green and I think it's a toss up if pizza or chicken nuggets are his favorite food. He loves chocolate, just like his Daddy. And his favorite sport is soccer or baseball, I'm not sure what dictates which is his favorite when! He finds the mud puddles outside almost instinctively and he loves to get dirty! He also loves to help me make dinner, although I'm pretty sure that cooking is not what he's most interested in--it's the food he gets to snag while we are making it!

He loves his little sister so much and does all sorts of silly things to make her laugh.

He is quite strong willed, which we pray God will use for His glory as our little man continues to grow and mature. We are so thankful for the interest that he has shown in spiritual things and we pray that that will continue and that he will come to love and trust in Christ.

He is a sweet little boy and I am thankful to be his Mama.

Birthday Traditions

First of all, thanks mom for watching Daniel so Joshua and I could go on a date while we were in Texas!

While on our date, Joshua and I started talking about birthday traditions. Daniel's birthday is coming up soon and we have not thought about what kind of traditions we want to start. I read Noel Piper's book about family traditions and treasuring Christ in those traditions but that was a while ago so I don't really remember specifics! We both decided that I should look at that chapter again and we can talk about this topic again. But we did continue our discussion. Some of the things we talked about were what is the point that we want to get across in the celebration of birthdays? > It seemed like that was a good question to start with because then that would drive what we decide to do. We decided that we want it to be a celebration of the person (kinda obvious!) and a way to treasure the gospel and Christ. So with that, our next question was what are things that we can do to make it a celebration of the person, but make sure they don't think the world revolves around them? What things can you do honor Christ or make much of the gospel in a birthday celebration?

We also talked about the importance of having traditions because it gives stability and expectation for Daniel and any future kids that we have. We are probably going to be living overseas and might have a somewhat varied schedule, so we think having traditions would help give continuity to a child's life. So we want whatever we do for birthdays to be something that can be easily replicated with multiple children in varied settings.

We don't like the idea of giving other siblings a present on the birthday of another sibling as seems to be the current trend. It seems like it would be a valuable lesson to teach the children who's birthday it is not, to rejoice for their sibling who is getting gifts and having attention given to them.

And we didn't get much further than this. We are having a hard time coming up with tangible things you can do and not just say that will give a birthday celebration more meaning than only the celebration of the persons life. So we decided to ask our parents and others what they did/thought on this subject. So if anyone actually reads this and has traditions that they do, or ideas they have heard of for birthday traditions we'd love to hear them. We are specifically looking for ideas about how to have a gospel centered, Christ exalting birthday celebration.