Before selling real estate, I was a teacher.  I have worked with all different age groups, but two year olds are my favorite!  A good thing since Maggie will be two in a few short months.  Most of my teaching experience was in a church.  I loved it!  I loved the simple way to introduce kids to God.  It was fun, and watching them begin to understand was amazing!  

Now I have my own little ones and I get to teach them about the Lord.  I am enjoying this so much!  Maggie is so bright and is really catching on!  I do my best to teach her how to pray and what it means.  For quite some time now, she will fold her little hands and pray with me.  We use to always do a song or rhyming prayer that I remember from my teaching days.  Once in awhile, I would forget to pray when I sat down, and I would look over at her and she would have her little hands folded and saying mommy over and over until I remembered and prayed.  

Then, I decided to do different prayers with her.  We fold our hands and pray simple prayers of thanks.  I say, she will repeat.  Usually it goes something like this…Dear God (Dear God), Thank you (Thank you) for our cheerios (for our cheerios), for our milk (for our milk) and for our juice (and for our juice).  Thank you for Maggie, and Charlie, and Mommy and Daddy (Thank you for Maggie, and Charlie and Mommy and Daddy).  Amen (Amen and BIG smiles)!

Now if I forget, she folds her hands and says a prayer without waiting for me.  I am so proud of her, and she reinforced that feeling on Sunday at church.  Sitting in church this week, she was quite loud during the entire service.  To the point where I considered taking her to the nursery.  We toughed it out (no easy task by myself with both of these munchkins).  We were praying and I told her she needed to fold her hands and pray.  She folded her hands and started praying…..Dear God, Thank you…followed by a bunch of things I didn’t understand.  I thought it was absolutely adorable!  It was a wonderful mommy moment for me.

We also decided a few weeks ago that we wanted her to learn about giving by putting a dollar into the offering bowl herself.  This is only the second or third time she has gotten to do this.  Now, we sit in the back row at church, and the offering bowls start at the front.  I gave her the dollar right away, and she was dancing with excitement waiting for her turn.  That girl is made of so much cuteness I almost can’t stand it!