Not-Christmas Letter continued

Judah – 6 and Loving It.  He’s still just as enthusiastic as ever, albeit in a slightly self-conscious six-year-old way. His very favorite activity is running around like a maniac with a horde of other little kids – as he was able to do at a wedding we attended last Saturday. His khaki pants came home completely trashed, and his face and especially ears were bright red with exhaustion and heat, but boy, did he have a good time. His favorite quiet activity (yes, he actually has those, too) is drawing. He will spend hours drawing with markers and although he sometimes ventures outside of his comfort zone, the subjects of his pictures are almost always war-spaceship-airplane-soldier related. His interest in his pictures seems to be more in the stories he’s telling in them than in the technical artistic details. Often he and Ezra will sit at the table, Judah drawing a picture (about a battle, no doubt) and telling the story to Ezra, who will look on and listen much longer than you would think possible.  We’re knee-deep in drawings around here, and the big question is always what to do with all of them?!! (If you would like a sample, just let me know, I’m sure he’d like to whip our 15 or so to mail to you…) Judah never wants to get rid of them – he never wants to get rid of anything. He seems to have inherited my hoarding gene.  His big project recently was reading 20 books, so that we would buy him his own Bible, which we did. He got it on Tuesday and is pretty excited about it – last night Michael asked himto  read the first verse in Samuel chapter 8 when we started devotions, and it’s amazing to me how much better he’s gotten with his reading in the last few months. He doesn’t read just for pleasure yet, but is proud of himself, nonetheless. His other big project is saving for a Risk set which we’re hoping to find used at a garage sale or thrift store. He’s drawn himself several maps and used army men, but it’s just not the same.  He doesn’t actually want to play Risk the game, (except occasionally with his dad) he just likes to play with the figures on the map and Michael won’t let him use our nice one, for fear of losing pieces (a wise choice – we’ve seen what happens to small pieces of other sets if we let the boys play with them unsupervised). He and Ezra are still pretty joined at the hip – they love to do things together and can spend hours outside playing in the yard or on the hill across our dead-end road. Judah’s a very good big brother to Monica, too – he can’t necessarily be trusted to watch her closely (outside, for instance), but he frequently gets her breakfast, lunch, or snacks,(even wiping her off after she’s done) and is happy to help her find her blanky or play with her while I’m trying to get things done. I’m training him to get her into her carseat himself, so that when the new baby is born he can do that job while I’m getting the newest passenger sorted out. Today he brought Monica in all decked out in some of my jewelry and with a bunch of hairclips in her hair to keep it out of her face – they were both beaming!

Yes, he’s a treasure, that boy, and I love him!