January 25 – “Little Guy Distractions”

I was worried whether I would have something to write about today.  Yesterday all I had planned was to work on the sermon and on consolidating the comments from Sunday's meeting.  I got the consolidating done and the emails sent informing everyone about it.  Now we wait for people's responses.  And we already have some of those.  Several folks have emailed back that they will be sending donations to the youth camp scholarship fund.  It's always been exciting when the whole church gets together on a ministry project.  I can't wait to see what happens this year.    So then we got a text from April, and everything changed.  Cailyn would be here around 1.  That meant no matter how much I tried to focus on the teaching, there would always be those little feet pattering around and that voice calling out, "DadDad," followed by whatever the babbling meant.  I have found that listening to her and Caleb talk is a lot like listening to anyone else talk when I don't have my hearing aids in.  I can often hear the sounds, but unless I have a context to draw from and some lips to look at, I have a terrible time making the sense of the noise come together.  With those two I can clearly hear the sounds, but making sense of them is always a challenge.  Like Cailyn's words, "Bopple Juice," that confounded us last time she was here.  I figured out that juice meant something to drink.  She uses that to refer to water or tea or real juice.  It was the Bopple that took awhile.  We finally made the connection that should have been obvious, "chocolate."  Sounds just the same now, right?   Chris convinced her to play with some toy dishes.  Chris had a whole tea party thing set up, and she was pretending to drink from the cups and eat from the dishes.  At first Cailyn looked at her like she had lost her marbles.  She wanted to go to the sink and put some of the real stuff in those cups.  Apparently she finally got it, though.  They brought me a plate full of something and two cups of some kind of pretend drink.  And when I pretended to eat, Cailyn thought it was the most exciting event of the decade.  Then she wanted it back.  I guess if I thought it was so good, she wanted to try it one more time.  Cailyn always has some scenario going with a baby doll that we have here.  It's not usually all that involved.  Yesterday after her Mom got here and while Mommy was talking to Nana about nursing stuff, she took me by the hand to take the baby to bed.  She was very cute.  We placed the doll carefully in the bed, covered it with a blanket, patted it on the tummy, turned out the light, tiptoed out of the room with her finger to her lips saying, "Shhh," and finally closing the door and saying, "Night night, Baby."  Sweet.  At least it was the first two or three times.  But when we did it the eighth and ninth time I began to wonder what was the appeal. I lost count soon after, because I began to try to insert minute changes to the routine.  Adding a stuffed animal.  Tucking her in a bit differently.  Saying, "Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite."  That was always a frightening thought for me.  Kind of like the line from that "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer, "If I should die before I wake."  Who could get to sleep when the last thing you hear is that you might die in your sleep?  I thought that might be little extreme for a two-year-old, so I tried the bed bug thing instead.  Didn't matter.  Whatever I tried, she just looked at me in frustration like I was some old guy who couldn't remember anything.  And very gently she would correct me, "No, DadDad."  I think we must have played "night night baby" a million times.  Don't they have softball or something for girls?    Psalms 31:23-24 says, "Love the Lord, all his saints!  The Lord preserves the faithful, but the proud he pays back in full.  Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord."   Father, thank you for the "little guy" distractions you have blessed us with.  I love them.  Amen.