MADELINE

Madeline is 6, but will be 7 in November! I think it is the oldest child, no matter how old they are, that continues to surprise you by their age. Madeline continues to be a sweet, sensitive, and very helpful young girl. She is quite the pleaser and never wants to do anything to disappoint us. She does not have a mean or deceptive bone in her body and in fact is completely at a loss when she sees others being unkind. She simply does not comprehend it. A classic example of this is a time when I was in the checkout line in HEB. Madeline was just over 2 years old. The boy in the basket in front of us, picked up the popsicles from the cart and said in a taunting little kid tone, "I have ice cream ha, ha, ha, ha." Madeline beamed at him and holding up a block of cheese, responded, "We have cheese!" The child looked so confused by this response, and I could not help but laugh at the situation. Now that she is older, she understands when a child is being mean, but doesn't understand why, so it just hurts her feelings. We have had many discussions with her about other's attitudes and sinful responses. Her response to these discussions is always the same, "But why do people want to be mean? Why don't they just be nice?" If anyone has a good answer to that one, please let me know! The other day, I was talking, perhaps a little too openly, about a co-worker of mine that is not very easy to work with. I was telling Neal about some of the specific things I have had to deal with this person and just venting some frustration. Madeline was listening in and made a comment that had me quite surprised by her innocence. She said, "Mommy, I know that sometimes children can be mean because they need to learn to obey God and their parents, but I did not know that grown ups could be mean too. Why are grown ups mean sometimes? Don't they know how to be nice?" So that began a whole different conversation about sin in adults and selfishness and pride, etc.......Madeline has wonderful personality traits, but they can be dangerous. We don't want her to trust everyone, or please everyone. At the same time it is almost sad to have to explain sin and disobedience crushing her idealistic view that people are nice and kind and would never do anything to hurt each other. However, I am grateful that I have to teach her about the "bad" things and that the "good" things are natural to her.
Madeline is in 1st grade this year. I am homeschooling her and she is doing quite well. She is beginning to read many books on her own, we do journal writing several times a week, we have science and history readers, and of course there is the daily math lesson. She struggles a bit with some math concepts, but we are getting through. This has certainly been a learning experience to me being that math always came fairly easy to me. So, I have had to be very creative in finding different ways of explaining the same concept, hoping that one of those will make sense to her. Counting by 5's has been a HUGE struggle, but I think with daily practice and TONS of encouragement, we will get there.
Madeline loves to play with baby dolls, my little ponies, and anything "princess". She is a great little artist and is constantly coloring/drawing for us. She is a wonderful big sister and enjoys playing with her siblings. We are so blessed by our special Madeline Lea.