Thank God for Manna!

Today's devotion was on God providing manna for the Israelites after they had escaped from the Egyptians and were in the desert. The Lord heard the peopl's complaints and provided them with "thin flakes like frost" on the ground.

I use the Candle's toddler's bible with En as it has nice colourful pictures, with a simple one-liner on each page. Its wonderful also because it shows the expression of the people potrayed on the page and the colour of the Israelites' hair is brownish (and not yellow! like in some other children's bible).

I planted Cheerios around the living room and asked En to search for Manna. Each time, he found the Manna, I would ask him to thank God for it. He was really excited in going through the process of searching and looking for his snack. I really enjoyed seeing the look of delight on his face when he found the "manna". Hopefully he remembers the manna in addition to the story of the Egyptians who suffered boils on their face. For the latter story, he would always touch his face with a pained look and say, "Aunty, pain pain" cos I told him the boils were painful on the Egyptians' faces when God inflicted it on them!

If you like this idea, you can use it for finding quail on the ground as well, which is the next part of the story in Exodus 16. This idea came from a book I read on stay home moms. This particular mother laid out the chicken and bread on the floor and her teenage children had their dinner on seated on the floor instead of at the usual dining table seat! How innovative! :)

Worship with Guitar

Re-posting this too (supposed to be last week's post).

I recently dug out a guitar which had laid quite forgotten in the cupboard. I had no musical background but had picked up strumming the guitar back in my christan fellowship days in university. En was very fascinated by the guitar. He can call it by name and loves to strum the strings. Well, he pulls them quite hard sometimes :P He is quite insistent on holding the guitar by himself even though it is clearly taller than him and quite bulky.For some mornings now, I have been using it to sing worship songs with En. I've only played two songs on the guitar for En: "He's got the whole world in his hands", "My God is so big". I will need to find more songs and their guitar chords online soon. I do hope that En will grow up enjoying music and playing at least one musical instrument. It is useful to learn at least one instrument for one can use it for playing songs for worship sessions.

Catching Fish

I am re-posting this as the pictures did not turn out when I published the post last week.

Last week, we played a game to teach En numbers. En loves fishes to bits. So, I printed out ten fish on coloured paper, cut them out nicely and hid them all over the living room: under the cushions, the carpet, the tissue box, the dustbin. Then I asked En to go "catch" or find the fish. He was really excited whenever he found a fish. After he finally found all ten fishes (of course, I had to give him hints like "under the cushion", "under the carpet" etc). I then got En to use the glue and paste the fish onto a fishing net drawn on paper, complete with fisherman in boat, sun and sea! I really enjoyed watching him have fun today. :)

First Art

Today, En used paints for the first time! I brought some Crayola fingerpaint for him and actually intended him to print balloon shapes on the drawing paper. However, that did not quite work out. But En just had a smashing time dipping his fingers and entire hand in the smooth, gooey paint and making quite a mess on the paper. I made him wear this Seasame Street bib as it covers his sleeves (in part) and the front of his shirt. Ta da, his first art piece! :)

The good thing about the Crayola fingerpaint is that it is smooth in texture but not thick like the usual poster paint. It is also washable so if your toddler's clothes get dirty, they will not be stained if you just dunk it in water and wash away after immersion for a short while.

Lemon Glazed Cupcakes

Was reminiscing the Limonata (here is a picture and review on the cupcake: http://www.cupcakefetish.com/DisplayStore.php?StoreID=321) from Marmalade Pantry (If you haven't tried them, you must. They are absolutely divine in taste!) so decided to make lemon cupcakes. Picked up this recipe from some blogger who had adapted her recipe in turn from Martha Stewart. It was my first time making cupcakes and wow, they were easy to make! Especially with the help of a kitchen mixer. Well, it was no Limonata but I was sufficiently encouraged by the results to try other cupcake recipes in future

Stay home mum?

I am becoming a mummy all over again! I am now 4 mths pregnant and thanking God that he saw me through a trying first trimester.

When I first became a mummy, in En's case, with much prayer and support from hubby, I decided to do part-time work. Now that I am becoming a mummy the second time round, the the thought to become a stay-home mum is beginning to sprout in my mind. I am not the first woman to "give up" her career and stay home to invest her time in the home and the kids. My mother in law did it and she did a wonderful job with her 3 children. I do wonder if I can do an equally good job.

I was educated all the way to university, worked for a good 7 years now in legal practice, only to become a full-time stay home mum? My paternal grandmother used to tell me: why do you need such good grades, afterall you will get married one day. (grin, maybe her prophecy will come true!) Well, times have changed since her days! God has given me the opportunity to be thus educated, to have joined the marketplace and learnt many practical lessons of life, about people. These are invaluable to a person's moulding of character. May we never dismiss what God has done in our lives for everything can be used for his glory.

Thank God that His ways are different from the ways of the world. He teaches in His word the roles and responsibilities of woman, wife and mother. A wife is to be a helper to her husband. She is to take good care of the household, including the kids (the famous Proverbs 31). She encourages and teaches the younger women in church.

Thank God for real-life examples of ladies in church who have chosen to work part-time or be stay home mums to take care of their familes, to bring their children up in the ways of the Lord, to invest their time where the souls of the little ones will last for eternity.

Of course, I have my struggles: what if I cannot use my time well at home? what if I lack the creativity and dynamism to be a cheerful contented stay home mum? what if we struggle with finances? Only God will be able to help our family if we decide to take this step.

May God guide my and all Christian women's decision-making process in this area of their lives.

Alphabets

Today I decided to play an alphabet game with En which I had sourced from the internet. The game consists of individual alpahbets with "wings" which are stuck on my clothes, arms and legs. The toddler is supposed to pick them off you and as he does, you recite the alphabets to him and paste it onto a wall. En was initially interested enough to pick some alphabets off me and stick them on himself. However, his interest waned shortly. I did manage to get him to pick the alphabet "A" off the wall, stick it on his forehead and pose for a picture. Poor En has a runny nose today hence the wet nose look!

After I took some pictures of En, he wanted to see the pictures. His favourite mode is the "I" mode these few weeks. He will say "I see" to see pictures we take on our digital camera. Inevitably, it would be followed by "I press" as he would want to take a picture using the camera. He managed to take a rather nice shot of our feet (ahem, of course, I had to steady the camera as he took the picture).

Kids WoW Worship

I was searching for some christian kids worship songs on youtube and came across this disturbing video. It was a Hillsong Kids music video featuring a worship session with kids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpn5AneeI4E&feature=PlayList&p=66A412421214A24F&playnext=1&index=36


I know Hillsong christian music falls into the charismatic christian songs category. Although I disagree with some of the theology behind some Hillsongs, I still enjoy listening to Hillong worship music. What disturbed me was the fact that this kids worship session was like an adult worship session, complete with MTV-style choreographed youth dancers and GASP! bubbly and cute-looking toy mascots in the form of little dolls with big heads. It resembled a fun party (which is great and it was wonderful to see the kids enjoying the worship session). However, I wonder if this is all the kids are exposed to in their church, is it any wonder that they get hyper, only enjoy things that are exciting, fast-moving, colourful, loud and showy. Will they learn to worship God without any idols like fancy-dolls and neat dance moves? The worship seems to be rather self-centred, worship-leader and dancers-focused.

I must express that the above opinion is written by someone who attends a Presbyterian church, so yes, I admit that this style of worship is not something I experience every Sunday. My background was a Methodist church though, which had a fairly charismatic style of worship. Having crossed over to a more contemplative and non-expressive style of worship, I do miss the expressive type of worship to God. If only we could strike a nice balance and learn to freely worship God and as we do so, always reflect and be thankful on what Jesus had done for us on the cross, how perfect that would be.

Boys and Their Toys

We took a family holiday to Perth recently. There, we stayed over with church friends for a few nights. Our church friends, a lovely couple, have two active young boys. Husband bought two NERF guns for them as presents. En seemed to have developed a better hold for the NERF gun after playing around with the boys for a few days. He can hold the gun almost quite properly (he doesn't know how to pull a trigger yet, thankfully!) and make "phhsshh" sounds as if firing the gun in emulation of the boys. What can I say? I just have to admit that he would have gotten to the toy guns sooner or later. :)