Theme Thursday- Guarding Your Child's Heart

My mother recently gave me this amazing workbook and DVDs called "Guarding Your Child's Heart". As I think about it now, this series follows after the goal I have for my LO that I discussed in a previous blog about the theme of this blog.  I want to be able to memorize and teach scripture to her in order to transform her worldview into a godly one and to show her how it can be used as a daily weapon against this dark world. 

 

The basis of this series is four Christlike beliefs that we need to hold onto. They are 

1) Humble yourself 

2) Love God

3) Love others 

4) Rejoice in trials

 

For each belief, there are two sections of 1) explaining what the belief is and 2) how to apply it to yourself and with your children. I enjoy the applying it with your children section on the dvd the most because you get to meet Dr. Gary Smalley, the author of the series, and his older children who applies it to their own children. They give very practical ways of doing it with scripture to back it up.  

The workbook is very simple and can be easily done in my free time. There are some times I can do it for my quiet time. The DVD segments are maybe fifteen minutes at most. While watching each segment, one can see Dr. Smalley and his passion for God's word. He applies what he is teaching. 

 

Because of this series, it really has challenged me to memorize God's word. I use some of the verses he suggests and add some that I come across when I read the Bible. I have about 17 verses I am working on. I use this app I found online called verse rain. I will hopefully talk about this more on Favorite Friday. But it has been VERY helpful and enjoy using it. 

 

This series has also convicted me on how I need to apply these four beliefs to my own life. I mean it is common sense that if I want to teach my little one how to live her life memorizing and applying God word that I need to do the same. But I will confess, it does not come naturally to me to apply God outwardly to all aspects of life. It is like I have to talk out loud in order for her to learn how to apply these beliefs to her life. That would be such a mess of emotions sometimes but I guess that's what it takes to be transparent, to humble myself and share what is going on in my life with my little girl. Well 1 Peter 5:6 does say if I humble myself under the mighty hand of God that in due time He will exalt me. He is faithful and has been working on my heart and in that I want to trust in Him.

 

 

Top 5 Tuesday- LO's Favorite books

My little one loves looking at books! She has so many toys, but she always seems to wander over to the bookshelf and look at her books. I am happy about that because I am not one of those moms who wanted to be intentional about reading to her little ones. But my little one has made it very easy. And I guess you can say I love the books we have gotten for her because they can be very action oriented and I love that! So here they are!

5) Anything with nursery rhymes
I think my mother in law had a hand in this because she always enjoyed reading the nursery rhyme books that she had. I got one at the Goodwill called Hickory, Dickory, Dock and other favorite nursery rhymes which has been big and colorful pictures that she likes to look at while I cite our favorite nursery rhymes. We also got a book that has a CD where it encourages her to read along. We listen to it in the car which she just relaxes to and sits in the backseat quietly.

4) Ten Tiny Toes by Caroline Jayne Church
This book is so cute! It has a big pictures and a cute baby! She has not catch on with the motions yet or where all her body parts are. But I do get her attention when I say each part of the body and show her where everything is at on her and I both. It reminds me of the Head Shoulders Knees and Toes song. Super fun book!  I totally would love to get her the other books with the same author.

3) Any books with flaps
Peekaboo Kisses and Hello, Baby a lift-the-flap book are two books I recently got at our library bookstore at super great prices. In Peekaboo Kisses by Barney Saltzberg, she lifts up the flaps to an animal giving kisses which also give many textures for her to feel. The last page is her favorite. It is a surprise for her after all the animals. Hello, Baby has cute little babies under the flaps. She loves finding the babies under the flaps as the book asks her where the baby sleeps or what the baby eats. It gives her options on what to flip and shows her where animals sleeps or what other animals eat. Kinda cool.

2) Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
My little one loves this book! This is another one that my mother in law showed me. I don't even know why she likes this book so much, but every time she sees it, she wants to read it. Maybe it has to do with it being a big board book. I really don't know why, but this is one of her favorites.

1) The four Helen Oxenbury baby books
I cannot tell you how much my little one loves these books! There are four books with these same babies that just seem to grab her attention. Personally they look like man babies to me but when she sees them, she recognizes them. We have 3 out of the 4. The first one we got is called Clap Hands. I put actions with the book and every time I say certain words she can do the action even when we don't have the book open. I have the entire book memorized and could "read" the book anywhere.  

My Little One's love

What a day! But even now in my tired and weak state I see God being faithful. He allows crazy moments and my little one's love to teach me how much He loves me unconditionally. All day long I have had one thing after another happen to me. There is one thing you have to know about me is that I am a big people pleaser to the point of freaking out and not thinking straight. My husband wanted me to burn our trash because it was building up in our shed. For the life of me I couldn't start the fire! I felt like I was disappointing him by not getting it done. I got so frustrated to the point of not caring that my little one was tired and getting upset at standing by herself while mommy was trying to start a fire. But at that moment I felt God's presence sweep over me telling me that this was not worth anybody getting upset about. So I picked her up and felt so much better. During her nap, I drew close to God realizing that all of this was not worth ruining a day over ( by this time it was 11:30). After she woke up I had to go to my in-laws' house and let the dogs out to go to the bathroom. Since the door of their house was close to the truck, I decided to keep my little one in the truck with it running and lock the driver's door only. Well what I forgot was that my truck is not like my car where when you put it into park that all the doors unlock. So I locked my little one in the truck. I was so upset at myself because all I could think of was how bad of a mother I was. I felt so worthless while my little one was crying in the car and how calling my husband would be so hard because of how the morning went with burning the trash. I got ahold of him finally after many busy signals and had the truck open for me. All I could do was cry. We got home after a hour of craziness, and I placed her in her high chair to finish her lunch. And when I gave her her sandwich she smiled at me as if nothing had happened at all. All I could do at that moment was shake my head and wonder how she could feel that way. But I then had the thought that this is how God feels about me in a even bigger way. I mess up but He still loves me. I freak out but He still sticks around. I am not saying this is easy for me to accept but it is something I truly want to grow more to understand and accept. And I think that's what He is trying to teach me.