Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Adventures of Raising One Boy Among Six Girls

Our son David is a great blessing to us. Before we had him, I had a miscarriage. We prayed that God would give us another baby, and that He would give us a boy. He answered both those prayers. Becca told me the story of what Al did when he arrived home after David was born. According to Becca, he took the stairs two at a time, yelling at the top of his lungs, "It's a boy!! It's not a girl, it's not a doll, it's a real live boy!" As he ran up our stairs, he jumped up and hit the top of our kitchen doorway. David is our middle child, literally surrounded by his older and younger sisters. Boys and girls are different. Not better or worse, not harder or easier, just different. One of the most interesting things about David was that he took everything literally. When he was three, we were on our way back from driving our older kids to school. He pointed out the donut shop in the center of town. I said, "Yes, David, some day I'll take you there." Well, two days later we drove by the donut shop again. We had a conversation something like this: "Mom. There's the donut shop. You said you'd take me there someday."
"OK, David, we'll go to the donut shop." I'm glad I had my grocery money with me that day!
David enjoyed music and learned songs after fearing them once or twice. He liked the song "He's Still Working on Me," which tells how God made the universe in a week, but He's still working on me, so He must be very patient. Whenever we would begin to reprove David, via the raised index finger and the stern "Now, David....." he would begin singing that song, complete with big blue eyes and little choirboy voice! We would crack up laughing..... but after the first couple of times he did that we still had to correct him. We would say, "David, He's still working on you but you're still going to get disciplined."
I did wonder, when we found out that our youngest was going to be a girl, what David was going to do with six sisters. Then I realized that if God was sending us this little baby girl, He had also chosen David to be the brother of all these girls. Well, David learned to love babies and he is a Marine Reservist!

1 comment: