INSIDE OUT

So, I'm sitting here at 11:51pm. J just fell asleep about 1/2 hour ago. Not sure what got into him! He was hysterically cute though. Jumping around asking the many "why" questions he recently got into these past couple of weeks. "Why not" is another one we hear around here often. Sometimes I think he's just asking for conversation. Some of the questions are repeats. I sometimes have to ask him to look me in the eyes when I answer him because he pays more attention and the repetitive "why" questions lessen. He is my most inquisitive child. Is this another middle child effect?

I'm quite intrigued by his favorite book. Our family loves to read. I will often find S curled up on a chair "reading" a book or two. My daughter, N, will frequently ask me to read her a book. Read her one and shortly thereafter it becomes three. J's favorite book? A bible. It's so cute. It's not even a children's bible either! It's a small printed bible we actually were going to give to charity or something. He extracted it from one of the boxes and has been holding onto it, sometimes sleeping with it, ever since! Recently he joined our home church conversation, sat down and opened his bible to Luke. That was last Thursday. Today he brought his bible out and told me he was reading Luke 2. What memories children have at this age! I certainly couldn't have remembered what we were reading last night!

I read Luke 2 tonight. It speaks about Jesus as a baby and then as a child. In one record, Jesus left his mother and father to go speak at the synagogue. His parents were anxious that they couldn't find him and wondered how he could do this to them. Jesus wondered, "why". Why were his parents so astonished at his leaving their side? Reminds me of my little guy.

Often J does things, which makes me think he just does it to get on my last nerve. "Why would he do that" often comes to my thoughts too. Tonight while watching him, I realized that J is living it up in his own life. He is so intrigued by this world that he has just got to go for it. The lure to do things, despite his mother telling him otherwise, is sometimes just too tempting. Of course, I can't let him get away with it. I doubt I'll quench this little guy's curiosity, simply by giving him boundaries to play within it. He is a hands-on learner. Something I hope I'll remember tomorrow when he throws a whole roll of wet toilet paper pieces all over the wall to see how it sticks.