My Seven-Month-Old Ate Dirt... (and other true confessions)

My seven-month-old son ate dirt TWICE this week.
Really, he did.

We have some plants on our balcony, which adjoins both our living room and kitchen, so it's a very easily-accessible place. Anyway. Two times this past week, I found him in the process of eating dirt. The first time, with dirt all over his hands, face, and in his mouth. The second time, he had just gotten to the pot. He's getting into all kinds of things these days, as the picture attests (he was chewing on cardboard in that particular moment)... which is fun (to see him hauling his cute little self around the whole apartment) and forces me to be on my toes.

My two-year-old is coloring on EVERYTHING.
She colored on the wall twice this week. One time, she took a crimson crayon and drew one big long line across our hardwood floor in the living room. Thankfully, it's lacquered, and we have a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

My four-year-old is going through a talk-back phase.
A sample conversation:

• Me: "Darlin, it's time for you to put away up your ____ now."
• Baxter: "But I don't want to."
• Me: "I said, 'it's time to put them away'. Yes, ma'am?"
• Baxter: "No, ma'am. Of course I won't."

Because of conversations like this, that poor child is getting some major training sessions from mom and dad. Slowly but surely, he's coming around. But we've been dealing with this for a couple weeks now, off and on.

My six-year-old, it pains me to say it, has started rolling his eyes.
And boy, does it drive me crazy! We're working on it, too, but we are hitting new things with him all the time. Poor guy; he's the guinea pig for all of our parenting successes and foibles.


WHY AM I SHARING ALL OF THIS?
To give you freedom and to help you give yourself grace! And to give you hard, cold EVIDENCE that no one has it all together. I don't ever want it to appear like everything is always grand, the children always obey, my crawling babies never get into things they shouldn't, or whatever.

My aim here at Making Home is NOT to get you to imitate me. Although, sometimes, that's an appealing thought-- imitation is flattery, right?-- and we all like to be admired and thought well of. But, more than that, I want you to imitate Christ, and not get caught up in the game of comparisons that chokes out the joy from so many young women in the throes of motherhood.

So hopefully, for those of you who think a mom of four younguns must be either saintly or totally out of her mind, this is a little sneak peak/real picture of motherhood. It's not always easy... and it doesn't always run smoothly or perfectly. Your crawler may get more germs than you'd like, and you may need a Magic Eraser. You may need every amount of self-restraint you can muster to NOT yell, "don't you roll your eyes at ME, Mister."

But... it is worth it. Talking about whether or not there will be chicken teriyaki in Heaven. Hearing a four-year-old recite (with a slight, endearing lisp) Psalm 121. The day-in, day-out discipleship and the sweet cuddling... little people who walk over to you and give you big hugs for no reason... oh, it is SO worth it. And I don't want to lose sight of the eternal significance of having loved and trained up four people to love Jesus and serve others.

But it's not all perfect. And I don't ever want to seem like we are. So there it is. My seven-month-old ate dirt. TWICE. And how was your week? :-)