Edge Games, Potty & Prayer

Things continue to chug along at the Gates Home. I've been busy with work, both with the veterinary side and with taking on a few more small roles on the business side. The latest is developing material for a website for the clinic.

Lincoln is growing up, one day at a time. On Thursday, Jenn took Lincoln to get a new potty. He loves it! He doesn't use it for it's intended function yet, but he loves to sit on it, sans diaper, for long periods of time. When he was showing it to me on Thursday evening after work, he sat there for a moment, and then looked up at me and said, "Close." So I nodded, not knowing exactly what he meant. Then he stood up, walked over to the door and shut the door in my face. Hmm. So I promptly grabbed his How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? board book, opened the door, handed it to him, and then shut the door behind me. He stayed in there for another five minutes or so. Then I went back in the bathroom to find him playing with some of his bathroom things in the drawers, still sans diaper. I picked him up to take him to his changing table to get him ready for bed, and as soon as he realized I was taking him out of the bathroom he started crying and saying, "Poop. Poop. Poop." I said, "There's no poop in the potty, and you were playing anyway." He settled down after a minute or so. In the 36 hours since then, the potty novelty has yet to wear off. We're not going to tackle actual potty training for a while, but we want him to like the potty, and that seems to have been accomplished.

The Edge Games started last night. You may recall my posts about taking photos at last year's Edge Games (post 1, post 2). This year, as an Edge Small Group leader, I'm a team coach. My small group is part of Fiji. I should explain that there are eight teams: Cambodia, Togo, Uruguay, Fiji, Aruba, Bahamas, Djibouti and Iceland. These eight teams are made up of a couple of small groups and all the friends they can invite. There were around 500 kids there for the first night of the Edge Games, and there were two sets of games, relays (involving a dizzy-bat race and Spam) and a fun game in the gym where each team was assigned a corner, and then had to make it across the gym to the opposite corner either crab-walking, crawling, rolling... whatever the game leader decided to call out. It was utter chaos in the middle of the gym when the teams collided! Then there was a "capture the bacon" style game where the kids run to the center and send yoga-balls and inner-tubes back to their corners. The game always ends with about 15 middle schoolers attached to an inner-tube trying to get it back to one of their corners. Again, it was chaos.

Jenn took Lincoln to Toddler Open Gym last night. When I arrived home from Edge Games and asked her how Lincoln enjoyed it, she said, "Well, all the other kids had fun!" Apparently he was a bit "clingy" for the first 40 minutes.

Another of the neat things that Lincoln has been into recently is praying before our meals. We've always prayed before bed time and he's learned to fold his hands and bow his head. Sometimes he even says, "Amen," at the end. But lately he's been very interested in praying at lunch and dinner time... even mid-meal. Yesterday, he and I prayed five times before I finished my ramen... and he wasn't even eating. He had been play with his tool box, then he walked over to the table and said, "Pray." So I thanked God for Lincoln, my meal, the blessings God gives us and the forgiveness that is ours. Lincoln stood beside my chair with his head bowed and hands folded. When I was done, he went back to his tool box. He came back four more times.