Learning Easter

My girl, Adeline turned three at the beginning of last month.
She's incredibly smart and has a real passion for learning new things.
That's a fun quality for me to have in a child, because I love teaching her!

That being said, last week after our 547th living room Easter egg hunt (fun for the 1 year old too), I asked Adeline if she knew what Easter meant.
"Easter eggs, prolly." was her reply.
So I took that opportunity to very generally explain to her that we celebrate Easter because Jesus died on a cross, and then He rose from the dead all for our sins and for His love for us.

The wheels in her head were instantly turning, and although I knew she surely didn't understand much of what I said, I figure she eventually will and we will just continue to speak truth.
Her first reaction was one that made me smile.

"But Jesus was just a baby."

I guess after celebrating Christmas in December (all the waaaaay into January because she was that pumped about it) I failed to relay to her that Jesus wasn't actually a baby when He died for us, that it was at the end of His life after he was a man and did great things for people over many years.

So once we cleared that up, my second question was this:

"Jesus died?"
Yea, baby he did die, but the really cool thing is that he rose from the dead and is alive in heaven where we get to meet him one day.

She was really taking that in, and I was totally feeling the warm fuzzies of adequate Mommy work, and then she slapped me with:

"Jesus got hit by a car. He should have listened to his mommy and not went in the road."

Aaaaaaalllllllllright no......

Well I guess that might be a logical assumption since the only time we've even discussed death with her prior to this was when our dog Gracie died after being hit by a car in October.
So I go on [and on and on] about how in fact Jesus was not hit by a car, and cars weren't even around in His day [haha because she'll totally get that] but Jesus died on a cross because of sin.

Now I know she's 3, and I know that a lot of this is really above her head. BUT, I believe in teaching truth, and I intend to do that until one day it will make sense.

My precious girl truly loves to learn, and while she's so eager and so full of questions I want to provide answers.

I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog before, but we actually are intending on homeschooling. I could write on and on on that topic alone, but my point here is that I've been conditioning her a little bit once or twice week by having 15-20 minutes of "school". I put Gideon to nap 15 minutes early, and we sit at the table and pray to learn what God puts on our hearts, then we do a short little lesson on whatever it is we're learning this week. Normally we work on letters or numbers or sight words, but today we went deeper.

Easter is in two weeks, and I wanted to let her do something fun and true to what we are celebrating.
So we took out one of her Bibles and turned to where Jesus was crucified. Thankfully the children's bibles we have don't illustrate in harsh visuals, and our favorite children's bible we used today just showed Jesus carrying his cross, the next page showed Jesus, the two robbers, and their crosses from the back from a distance. We read on to where Jesus was laid in a tomb and onto when he rose. The pages I read to her today weren't incredibly detailed and didn't take but about 3 minutes to read, but with her questions and pausing we studied and talked about it for probably about 5-8 minutes (keep in mind I'm on a 3 year old's attention span).

I felt like she had a general understanding of the words that I read, and she really seemed satisfied to my answers to her questions. Eeeeee yay!

I let her pick a piece of colored scrap paper, and we used some embellishment tape to make a big cross. I dug through my embellishment box and found some little jewels that I let her decorate it with. Her eyes were so big and excited and she went right on to work.

Throw in a couple of crayons and her busy fingers were making this week's piece of refrigerator spotlight art.

I wanted to make sure to write about this right away because I didn't want to forget what she said next.

She started making little crosses with a green crayon as she stated that the cross looks like a little "t".
Yep it sure does.

 "Mom, I'm going to get on a rocket ship and bring this to Jesus when I'm done, and he will be so happy."

Insert a goofy, dreamy, proud mom face while you imagine me just sitting there during a long pause.

As I'm recording this I could note the difference in my parenting and Philip's parenting is always comical.
Philip wouldn't have missed a beat when he would have jumped on the rocket ship ban wagon and totally ran with the coolness of that.
I just replied with something similar to telling her Jesus loves how happy He makes her and He is watching her color from heaven, but we can't get on a rocket ship to see him.

"Well, maybe I could just give this to Daddy when he comes home."
Ok. Glad that's settled. 

Easter

We had a really nice Easter weekend. 

I think each one of us had some well deserved relaxing time, and we all spent some really nice together time too.

We went away camping for the weekend, and it was a beautiful one! 

Adeline could swing her days away. That child is normally such a little wild thing, but when you put her in a swing [only upon her request] she is such a peaceful little thing. Philip and I seriously pushed her in a swing probably 40% of her entire weekend. 

When she wasn't swinging though, she was working the camera: I think these are some of my favorite pictures of her to date, they capture her personality so well!

Gideon was such a sweet happy boy this weekend, as he usually is. He took naps in the warm sunshine and smiled in his sleep when a breeze would touch his chubby little cheeks. I couldn't help but wonder how awesome it must be to be pushed or carried around all day, take naps whenever he pleases, and be cuddled and kissed to sleep. He's such a blessing!

Philip really enjoyed the kids this weekend. [Ours, his cousin, and his godchild] He helped them do some fishing, pushed them on swings, took them paddle boating, and cuddled ours to sleep. I probably thanked God for my children's daddy at least a dozen times this weekend. He's a good man, and I'm so thankful for him!

As for me, I enjoyed simply watching. It was sweet to see our little baby family on such a beautiful weekend. On Saturday Gideon and Adeline took a 3 hour nap in the camper. The rest of the family were out and about playing games, fishing, and enjoying the sun, but I stayed in the camper and as tempted as I was to rest too, I did some studying in my bible. [well, my iphone bible that is]. 

I normally have a lot of trouble focusing when it comes to reading and studying The Bible, but for 3 straight hours I just read and learned and cried and prayed. It was a place I've never before been. A place where my attention didn't wander. A place where my heart felt right and my brain understood. A place I needed to learn and know, and I'm so glad I did. It was a really breakthrough day for me, and it really made Easter a different, more glorious holiday than I'd ever known it.

"I wike da gween one."

It's written in my long list of rules [in my head] somewhere about dying Easter eggs the week before Easter Sunday.


and since I'm really big on following the rules... we did just that today.

Clear glasses quickly fizzled into every color of the rainbow, which my little Squiggy proudly recited as the colors consumed the water.

and although she can't count passed 10 yet, we counted all dozen of the white eggs.... we just had 3 number 10s. ;)

This is Adeline's 3rd year of Easter Egg dying, and it was the most interactive one yet. The passed couple of times of doing it, it was literally just me dying the eggs while i forced her to watch. This year she did almost everything herself.

Her little hands were so eager to help, and for the most part, I just let her go to town.

and out of pure lucky grace, we only had one egg crack.

it's little things like dying Easter eggs that make me so thankful for the little helping hands in my life right now.

Happy Easter!

I hope ya'll had a blessed holiday. 

Look how much my angel baby has changed from last Easter to this Easter:

My heart aches that baby time has gone by so quickly, but gee I sure do love every moment of new discoveries, adventures, and games.

I don't remember her getting this much Easter candy last year though: