Amen!

I love listening to my kids pray. I especially love to listen to them when they say their prayers all by themselves, and to hear what they ask for when not prompted by another person. It's the true meaning of life unscripted. Cam has recently started to say his prays all by himself. May I share his latest prayer with you:

"Heavny Fader. Tank you for dis day. Pwease bwess our food. One nation. Unner God. Inabisble. Amen."

Yep. The Pledge of Allegiance. It fits nicely there at the end of the prayer, wouldn't you say? We say it every Tuesday and Thursday when I'm teaching my classes at Kiddie Kollege. Cam, on the other hand, never says the Pledge with us, or does anything with us, for that matter at school. His main goal while at the good ol' KK is to create as much noise as possible or to cause bodily damage to anyone who dares tread in his path. I wish I could say that I'm kidding. There are many (MANY) times I'd like to drop kick him out the window for his unruly 3 year old boy behavior. I struggle to teach my class when he is in one of his moods, running around the room, dumping bins of toys on the floor, or banging his toy animals on the tables (SOOO noisy!), or head-butting one of my students because they had the guts to look him in the eye. And I won't even tell you about the multiple times a day he comes running into my classroom buck naked from the waist down after using the potty for all the little boys and girls to see. One time he even turned around, faced them all, and did a little naked dance for them while I scrambled to put his underwear and pants back on him before any of my little girls without brothers started asking questions. Full frontal nudity at preschool. From my son. (For those of you whose kids are in my class, I offer my sincerest and heartfelt apologies for this and all other matters concerning Cam. I'm sure you hear about all of them. And sadly, yes, they are probably all true.)

So back to Cam's prayer. Of course it melted my heart. How could it not? But I also found myself doing my own personal victory dance (fully clothed, of course).

Why, you ask?

Because his prayer is living proof that that the little stinker is actually listening and learning--while throwing his toys around the room, dumping the puzzles all over the floor, and running naked throughout the building!!! Who knew?!?! (The little turd...) And that, my dear brothers and sisters, for this mother, is sweet, sweet victory.

With liberty and justice for all!

AMEN!

"Raising a kid is part joy and part guerrilla warfare." (Ed Asner)

"Of all the animals, the boy is the most unamangeable." (Plato)