52 Things

You know how you sometimes get confused about something or are really concentrated on figuring something out and then God just takes the wheel when you least expect it?  That kind of happened to me yesterday.  I was at Walgreen’s waiting on my prescription to be filled so I sat in the sitting area.  I saw a revolving bookcase filled with numerous books with intriguing titles.  Lots of them had to do with parenting and religion.  See, given that it’s busy season, my head has been filled lately with the idea of being away from Carter so much.  I have been thinking of ways to make sure he knows that I love him and am always here for him, even though I’m not technically the one that sees him the most (insert knife into my heart as I write that).

While looking at all of these awesome books, I happened to pick one up called 52 Things a Kid Needs From a Mom by Angela Thomas.  I browsed through it while waiting and it was long enough for me to decide that I needed to purchase it.  I love reading.  LOVE reading.  I don’t always have time for it, but I try to make time when I can.  When I was pregnant with Carter I was obsessed with reading all things that related to pregnancy and towards the end of the pregnancy I began to read about what to do when he was here.  I have become an AVID fan of the Babywise book series as well as the book Happiest Baby on the Block, both of which I HIGHLY recommend to new parents.

I knew nothing about raising a child or being a parent, obviously, and these books helped.  By reading some of these books, I gained a lot more confidence that what I was doing, even if Carter didn’t love it, was the right thing for him so that he could grow into a healthy, academically advanced, and routine sleeping machine :)  But as great as this was, I needed help in the “I’m a working mom and don’t want my child to think I’m abandoning him” area and these books didn’t provide that.

Enter 52 Things.  And God saying “Here you go”.

Now granted, most of these things are things that Carter won’t pick up on yet, it will be something he’ll pick up on maybe after turning 3ish or so.  But it’s great to have an idea ahead of time of the things I need to make sure I’m doing.  I haven’t read all 52 things yet, but I do plan to blog about them over time so that any other moms out there can read about it and apply to their lives, if they feel so desired.  Each item has it’s own chapter and each chapter is only a couple of pages so it’s definitely an easy read.  I did scan through the table of contents to get an idea of what all I would be reading about and I gotta tell you, I would NEVER have thought of some of this stuff!  My particular favorite that I have read so far is chapter 3 which is “Kids need a mom to hang hearts of love over their life”.  At first glance, I was thinking “what on earth could this be referring to?” 

I’ll go into more detail on it in a later blog post, but it’s GOOD.  Like, I literally just created a Valentine’s Day tradition for our household that I will do every single year starting this year.  That good.  There are other heart stopping chapters like the following:

• Pray in secret….with the door open
• To miss a few things they do wrong
• To put down the phone
• To keep a family blog (Got this one under control!)
• To make a big deal out of God
• To make a big deal out of grandparents and extended family
• To teach the boys how to love a wife and the girls how to love a husband

Obviously I could on on with this list by showing you all of the 52 things, therefore ruining further detailed posts about each item, but I’ll wait until I read more about them.  I’m really excited about this book because by reading it, I’m finding ways to make sure our kids know we love them before they ever have the thought that we don’t.  Being proactive :)