Norah Turned 3 and Got New Parents

Well, Norah turned 3 a couple of weeks ago and had a couple of her friends over for a birthday party.  Hands down, worst birthday party ever.  Norah was an absolute monster the entire time.  She was being rude, disrespectful, and not playing nicely with her friends.  When everyone tried to sing Happy Birthday to her she actually got mad and started yelling at them.  Awesome.  Jamie mentioned afterward that if she had been anywhere else she would have just packed her up and left.

In a side story, Jamie and I are going through Effective Parenting in a Defective World with our small group.  We are only a couple sessions in, but already its been extremely impactful.  The biggest take away for me is that it does not so much matter what we say, its what we do.  The values that get instilled into our children come from them watching what we value.  If we say reading the Bible is important, but they never see us reading it, do we really expect them to grow valuing God's word?  Not likely.  And that goes for anything.  So Jamie and I had to take stock of how we were living and ask, what values are we instilling in Norah.  Unfortunately it was a lot of frustration, impatience, selfishness, etc.  You get the idea, everything NOT found in the fruits of the spirit.

So back to the birthday party.  I was very convicted that her attitude at the party was a learned behavior from watching us.  I'm in no way discounting original sin, even if we were perfect parents the sin nature would be evident in Norah's life.  However, the scary thing was that most of her less than flattering tendencies were learned from her parents.  So we have made a choice to stop modeling the fruit of darkness, but rather the fruits of the spirit.  Its only been a few weeks, but even in this short amount of time I think I can see a huge difference in her attitude.

Now, what would a blog post be without some pictures.... so here you go.  I'll add more as soon as I can find the cord to get the photos off the camera.

Norah waiting for the Holiday Train...it was cold!

Norah and Daddy eating Ramen noodles, Lady and the Tramp style