innocence and examples

Today at church, I took I. into the foyer during Sacrament meeting--seems like he always gets cranky right then. Anyway, we were sitting on the couch there and on the wall behind the couch was a picture depicting the Sermon on the Mount. He kept looking at the picture and smiling and cooing at it. I would say something about it being a picture of Jesus and he'd look at me and look at another nearby picture of Jesus and then look back to the Sermon picture and smile. Times like that always make me wonder whether babies can remember heaven and being in the presence of the Savior. I realize that I. was probably attracted by the pretty colors of the pictures, but to moment was still valuable to me as a reminder that he and T. were so recently with Heavenly Father and that they are still so innocent.

Other good Mommy moments recently: T. can get herself from laying down to sitting now. Her first tooth is breaking through, too. She is smiling more than she used to. I used to have a hard time getting her to smile--now just strangers have a hard time. At Costco the other day, she was bursting into tears every time a stranger stopped us, even though she was in the sling!

Every night we read from The Book of Mormon as a family with each person reading a verse. For a long time, F and E would sit and read with us, but A would wander off and play by herself. Just recently she's started wanting to "read" with us (this means that one of the adults tells her what to say for her verse). I learned a couple of things here: one is that my kids really value this time spent together as a family. They may not understand much of what we read yet, but they like it that we are all together. I think that's why A. started joining us. But I also learned something about teaching by example instead of coersion. If I had tried to make A. sit through scriptures before she was ready, she would have simply been a disruption to everyone else, and I think that she would still be fighting it now. Instead, the rest of the family set the example of what to do, and now she does it because she wants to. I think I need to apply this lesson to more areas of my teaching with the kids. If I do what I'm supposed to, they will follow--eventually, anyway.