My Obsessive Compulsive Soldier

So my little soldier all dressed in "armor" had a good day yesterday, as did his sister. We talked a lot about what it means to be a soldier for Jesus. I use his obsessive compulsive tenancies to my advantage when I can. He's obsessing over the felt set, the scripture verses and the fiery darts. He actually is gung ho about memorizing the whole chapter of Ephesians 6. He's up to verse 4. Word retrieval is still a bit of a problem with this kiddo, so it takes a lot of repetition, but his obsessive compulsive mode works well with this.

I thought of a fun story to read to him called Teddy's Button. It's about a little boy set in the Victorian era whose father had died a hero in a war. There was one button left on the coat when he died and Teddy wore the button with pride and aspired to be a soldier like his father. He got into fights with the village boys until his mother forbade him to fight anymore. Then along came a little sailor girl who taunted his father's story and he decided this girl was his enemy but he knew he couldn't fight her since boys don't fight girls. Eventually, he was led to see that his real enemy was self, so he gave "self" as ugly a name as he could think of and on his knees he learned to fight like a real soldier. Very sweet story that has been around forever and I knew I could find a copy somewhere, but lo and behold, it is free for kindle on Amazon. It would be best to have the illustrated book, but this is what we have for now.

I have not attempted to read a book of this nature to the twins before. This has some old language that I have to modify because these kids don't have a natural understanding of language and context gives them no clues. So, I read one chapter and then we recreated that chapter orally. I'm hoping this will broaden his thinking and understanding of books a little. I might even have to read him the book a few times, but hopefully it will do a two-fold work for him and the next book will be easier for him to grasp. I already know that I will read Little Pilgrim's Progress next.

Missy's only obsessed with swimming and thus she was pretty easy to live with yesterday. The kids jumped on the trampoline with the hose for awhile. Her excitement about that was over the top and a little nutty.

Today might be Vanessa's last day working cherries since the Chelans are nearly done and before the next variety are ripe she is leaving for CA with Brianna for Youth for Jesus. I can't believe that's coming up already!