My Precious Baby and Her Sin Nature

I promise I am not going to preach in this post, only talk about my sweet angel- who is currently devouring a church bulletin, oddly enough.

Since Hannah has become more active and mobile, she has obviously started getting into things that she should not. I have endeavored to put most things out of reach that I do not want for her to touch and put things within her reach that I do not mind her playing with-example- I moved the Pyrex and Corningware and  put in its place the less used, less important plastic tupperware. The cat food and water had to move as well. Obviously, I cannot move everything out of her reach, though every day I am rearranging more and more.

Within a day, Hannah began to understand the meaning of the word "no". When I would say it, she would stop what she was doing immediately. Now of course she would return and do it again a few minutes later, but each time when I said "no" she would stop.

Well, a few days passed and I was pleased with how well she was doing and then it happened. I told her "no" about something and she looked me straight in the eyes, smiled and turned back around to it. I could not  help but smile a little bit. I had to turn away to hide it from her!

So for a while now we have been seeing behavior of a child that knows what Mommy means when she says "no". Sometimes she chooses to obey and sometimes she chooses to disobey.

Yesterday, she did something new. She knows that she is not supposed to go down the hallway (sometimes I barricade it with toys). Well, I was rolling a ball with her and the ball went past her and rolled down the hall. Without thinking, I told her to go get it. She turned around to crawl that way, but when she got to the playpin, she sat back down and looked at me as if to say, "but Mommy, you told me not to go that way". I was so proud of her!! Not wanting to undo the progress that we have made I went and got the ball myself. Moments like that remind me that she is learning- whether she always obeys or not.

I know it may sound strange, but seeing her disobey or seeing her stubbornness makes me praise the Lord. I can see so clearly my own faults in my baby (but that is another story altogether) and that our sin nature is oh so present from birth. But I praise the Lord because that is not all that there is to it! Jonathan and I have been charged to bring Hannah up so that she never knows a day in which she did not acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ and that she would have a personal relationship with Him early in life.