Little Lessons Learned

This weekend Cody and Anna had the opportunity to fish-sit for our neighbors while they were on vacation. Cody and Anna were both quite pleased! They loved feeding them and watching them everyday. I caught Anna several times on her tippy-toes trying to get a better view. Speaking of caught……….The very first day we had the fish I had to go upstairs to put Anna down for her nap. Cody seemed to be very curious about the fish at that particular moment (almost too curious) and didn’t want to come up with me, but he assured me he would just “watch” the fish. I remember Cody saying something like, “Mom, come here.” Sure enough, I went downstairs and Cody had his whole hand in the tank, fully concentrating on how to catch that little fish! Curiosity had gotten the best of him. The fish were then moved to a higher elevation.

Yesterday we headed to our neighbor’s house to return the fish and give them their mail. Cody wanted to carry their mail over in his new backpack. As I opened up his backpack I found two little toy farm animals that belonged to his Sunday school class. My first thought was “My little boy smuggled this out on Sunday!” However, after thinking it over, we truly believe it was an accident, for reasons that would be too long and boring to explain. Regardless, I thought this would be a great time to introduce the 8th Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” He took everything to heart and seemed very happy to return the little sheep and pig next Sunday. A little later I saw Cody and Anna having a serious conversation, with Anna listening intently. Cody held out his hands with the toys in them and said to Anna in a very serious and sweet little voice, “Anna, we can’t have these,” as if Anna was somehow a part of the heist. Anna nodded her head in agreement. Cody continued, “These are the church’s, so we can’t have them. Their not ours.” Anna, like a good student, nodded again. Cody then saw me and said, “Mommy, I teach Anna how to learn this.”