Its been so intriguing to Stan and I this summer to watch the differences in our children become more obvious. Of course we know they are different, but when one copies the other a lot, its harder to see. But this summer, we've taken note of it as it seems to happen more often. Chasadya seems to be much more artistic, always wanting to color, draw, do crafts, or read. She loves music, and last spring we enrolled her in dance classes, which included ballet and tap. She loved it, and she's enrolled for the full year coming up. She loves to put on her ballet clothes and slippers and dance around the house. Stan recently brought home a plastic ballet bar from a co-worker, and she loves to stand there, practicing on one leg with pointed toes. She often sings to herself, as she is right now as I'm typing this. We feel like she's definitely going to be our creative, artistic child.
Mikaela has done a lot of these things as well, as a copycat to her sister. However, she gets bored of coloring long before her sister, and will dance with her sister, but it seems to be something she does because her sister is. Invariably, while Chasadya is coloring, Mikaela is playing barbies, or more recently with the Polly Pockets given to the girls by their auntie. She can sit for hours playing with the little dolls. She also talks and sings while she plays, but again, it seems a learned behavior from her sister. She does a high pitched voice when she plays that gets a bit annoying, but to her makes perfect sense. Along with these noticeable differences comes the most obvious.
She loves to climb on things. And not just furniture, but play equipment. In our backyard we have an old metal swing set, the kind with the seesaw swing, as well as a two-person bench swing. It also has two sling-style swings. Although some of the ideas of what to do on it came from her older cousin, Mikaela has learned that there is a lot more to the swing set than swinging. Its actually a bit frightening. She climbs onto the arms of the bench swing, grabs hold of the top support bar, and lifts her feet off the swing. She then proceeds to do a number of different things. Sometimes she just lets the swing go back and forth, putting her feet on the other side, other times we've caught her with her feet on the top bar beside her hands, with her head hanging upside down. The first time I saw this I almost had a fit. But she is completely comfortable. She then often goes from one end of the swing set to the other, climbing on the other support bars. We have come to the conclusion that rather than put her into dance like her sister, that she should probably be in gymnastics. We desire to see our children doing things they enjoy, and do well at. It would be easy to put Mikaela in the same things as her sister, because its simpler. But we're thankful that God has given us two very different children, and that we have had opportunity to see this summer some of those differences.
Proverbs 22:6 says " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Rather than seeing that as a promise that if I teach my child everything about God when she is young that she will not rebel( very nice thought, but not sure that's what God guarantees), we think that the verse means to teach them in their "bend". Meaning, find out what their gifts are that God has given them, rather than impose on them our own ideals or dreams. To let them explore their God-given talents. I know I'm not saying it as clearly as I would like, but basically, what I think is that we can't pour all our children into the same mold and expect it to turn out perfectly. They each have their own path, and its our duty as parents to find out what that is.
Once again last night we saw the differences in our girls. Chasadya started to dance for her daddy in the living room. She twirled and twirled. Soon Stan pointed out Mikaela. She was standing on top of her wooden rocking horse with no hands, rocking back and forth. We laughed together. We most definitely have both a dancer and a gymnast.
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