Laura

Laura is my 4 year old. She is at an interesting stage of her small life. Lately she has started putting things in brown paper bags. I told her she could use them instead of all my gift bags. She fills them with her treasures like stuffed animals, play dishes and crumpled paper. She then carries all of these bags around the house. The other day, she decided that they all needed to be placed under the eating counter. After they had been there for a couple days, it prompted my husband, Keith, to say, "We have to do something about our 'bag lady!'" It reminded me of how my mother talked about the many boxes of rocks that I had saved under my bed growing up.

The other part of this bag phenomena is that since they are 'gift bags', she is wanting to give gifts to everyone. Keith and I aren't sure how to handle it when she wants to give another adult a bag with a stuffed animal or a crumpled paper plate. Even today when we went to visit a widow from our church, she came running into our vehicle with a fish printout that she had cut herself to give.

We want to facilitate a giving heart and a willingness to hold onto worldly possessions lightly, but we want gifts to be appropriate too. One day we were getting ready to go to a graduation ceremony and Laura was determined to give her doll to the graduate. These are the times when it is helpful to be able to say, "Keith, I don't know how to handle this one!" The problem is that he sometimes says the same back to me.

A couple weeks ago, Laura asked to pick out a silk flower at the store. I thought that it would be a cute centerpiece for the little table in her bedroom. We briefly stopped at home to drop off the groceries on our way to a church function. We got out of the vehicle at church and Laura immediately brought her flower over to give to another mom. ...I wish I were more like that...