Jesus is King

Before I get to the main story of my post title, I have to say that my little H3 is a natural born comedian. She loves to laugh. Some of the things she says off-the-cuff can be both surprising and hysterical. I have a couple favorites from the past couple weeks that I'd like to share.

Last Christmas, my parents bought a little nativity set for H3 to play with, so of course I brought it out with this year's Christmas decorations. She was in the living room playing with it and having the little characters talk to each other. I overheard her talking with the wise men by name and then my smile dissolved into giggles. I asked her to repeat herself, to make sure I'd heard correctly. Yep. My daughter was calling the wise men "Melchior", "Gaspar", and "Luke Skywalker."  Of course I had to ask her where she heard that, since she has never seen Star Wars.  "On Ba-Ba!" she told me excitedly.  Gee, thanks Veggie Tales (Little Drummer Boy) for teaching my child that one!

Last week we had "W" for our letter of the day and we talked about all the words that begin with that letter...watch, whisper, wave, wet, walrus, whiskers, worm, etc. H3 really seemed to enjoy the lesson and I thought that was the end of it until a few nights ago.  I came upstairs with H4 just as H1 was tucking H3 into bed. I'm glad I came up when I did. I arrived just in time to see H3 put both hands up and touch my husband's beard.  She ruffled his beard hair for a moment and then looked up and said "Daddy, you have whiskers just like a walrus!"  My husband just about fell over laughing.  Me too.

(Heaven's Loss by Ron DiCianni)

And now to the title of the post. Earlier I talked about my daughter saying things that are surprising, and here is one of those moment.  Yesterday I took the girls with me to get an alignment and oil change on our van. We went to Sears, which is attached to the local mall, so I took the girls to walk around while the van was being work on. There is a ginormous Christmas tree in the center of the mall and next to it, a man dressed as Santa was sitting to take pictures with children. We passed him once in my quest to find Bath and Body Works for some handsoap. On our way back, we started to pass him again and H3 stopped me.  She looked really excited and she was watching all the families lined up to have pictures taken. I was curious what she would do. A while ago she asked me about Santa, and while I am aware and accepting that many families teach their children to believe in Santa as the gift giver at Christmas, H1 and I decided to teach her about St. Nicholas as a historical figure and that gifts come from family and friends.  We stood watching for a few moments and then suddenly H3 asked to go see Santa. I told her no, we weren't going to go stand in that line and the van was ready to be picked up.

"But Mommy, I have to tell him something."  Now I was really curious. "What do you want to tell him?"  "Mommy, I have to tell Santa that Jesus is the King!"  (I really wish that line hadn't been so long, otherwise with that statement I would have let her go.)

There are a lot of things about Jesus that my 4 year old cannot answer and a lot of things she doesn't understand, but she does know truth and in her own way, she knows that Jesus is someone to be shared.  Her desire to share Jesus with the Santa in the mall just melted my heart.  Jesus is why we have Christmas. Jesus is what it's all about.

~H2