I Am Tarzan, Hear Me Roar!

One day, I'll find something to post about that doesn't involve my son. One day, I'll have something interesting and terribly witty to write about and Caleb's name won't be mentioned anywhere. One day, I'll realize that it's ok to write about subjects other than offspring.

But today is not that day.

When Caleb was in my womb, I loved to feel him kick. And boy! did he ever kick! All the time, in fact. "Counting kicks" as my doctor termed it, was never an issue for me. I didn't have to count them; he did the entire allotted number in the space of a minute or so every. single. evening. And morning. And afternoon. And . . . well, you get the picture.

I should have known then what an active little boy he would be. =)

Allow me to relate the conversation we had with his Sunday School teacher this morning when we picked him up after church.

Teacher: "Hello, which one's yours?"

Jason: "Caleb."

Teacher: "Oooooh." *looks over her shoulder* "Where is he? Well, wherever he is, he's moving I'm sure."

The teacher then proceeds to hand Caleb over to Jason. At which point I pipe up and ask:

"Did he do a craft today?"

Teacher starts to laugh, then says: "He is the Destroyer of the Crafts. But he does have a good time doing it. I could save some of the remanants if you want . . . "

At this point, Jason and I were laughing so hard we could hardly wave her off and say No, thank you, you don't have to save the "remanants" of the destroyed craft.

Then we looked at each other. Yep, that's our son!

Later tonight, after dinner, Jason pulled out the playdough. Those two sat at the table happily playing while I did the dishes. At some point, Caleb decided that the rolling pin wasn't the only way to flatten playdough. He stuck a ball of it on his chair and then stomped up and down on it with his bare little feet. =) Once again, we found ourselves laughing so hard we could hardly see.

Yep, that's our son.

I am fast realizing what a high energy little man we have on our hands here. He's go go go all the time. Like a cross between Tarzan and the Energizer Bunny. Cute, mighty, wild, and wired. And we don't even give him caffeine.

I'm simply amazed at how Jesus built our son. I'm curious to see what else we'll discover about him in the days ahead. Most parenting books will talk about a child "discovering" and "exploring" the world around them; what they don't tell you is that parenting is a discovery process all in itself.

Sure, the child may learn to walk and talk and to not eat leaves, batteries, and pennies.

But we parents learn much more: flexibility, patience, creativity, selflessness. We get to learn who our children are.

Leave it to God to kill two birds with one stone. The family exists not only to grow and nurture children but to grow and change the adults, too. Who woulda thunk it, eh?