It’s so sweet to walk into the living room and have your almost-two-year-old son say to you, “How are you, Mommy?” I said, “That’s so sweet, Tyler! I’m doing great, how are you doing?” “I’m good” he replies. He’s just too much!

We’ve been having incredible days with Tyler. Since he recovered from all the flu a couple weeks back he has made huge leaps in being able to communicate and play so interactively. These days he’ll just ask me, “Daddy’s at the office?” and when I say “Yes” he says, “He’ll be back soon!” And the other day while at the store I picked up a scented jar candle and opened the lid. Tyler wanted to copy my by smelling it so I held it to his nose. He sniffed and said, “Smells so good!” Hilarious!

When we play cars we don’t just roll them across the coffee table to each other, he has certain cars that are the “bad guys” and the red cars are always the “good guys” and he makes them chase each other around. I guess these might seem just tiny steps of development, but I was skimming my archives of this time last year and wow, Tyler has grown so much!

Some of Tyler’s favorite things nowadays are…

-Alphabet cookies from Trader Jo’s. I am amazed how into them he is, we sit with a handful and he loves trying to name the letters and sometimes gets them right!

-Auntie, Uncle and his three cousins! My older sister Alicia (with him in the picture above) lives close by and is a part of our church family. Sunday they babysat Tyler for a meeting Bobby and I had and it was the highlight of his weekend!

-Reading, especially lift-the-flap books. Pastor Pete and his wife Val gave us a box of wonderful books that their boys used to read and it’s been like Christmas all over again going through them.

-The fact that our passes to Disneyland have been unblocked from the holidays! Yesterday we spent the afternoon there with my sister and her family and had such a great time. It didn’t rain, there were no lines and parking was free. That’s all from my perspective, though. From Tyler’s it’s–Winnie the Pooh Ride, a Mickey lollipop and all the Christmas decorations still up.

Tyler is such a joy! With all these sweet days I have been thinking, too, about the importance of training him. It’s not just all fun and games. Bobby and I have so much to teach him and there is plenty of discipline, especially fuss admonition that goes on 24/7. We want him to be obedient, to us and to God. Now that’s a task.

This weekend Bobby preached from 1 Peter 1:14-16 the call to “Be holy, for I am holy.” (I hope you’ll listen to the sermon by clicking here!)I noticed that at the start of the passage, Peter exhorts the readers to be holy, appealing to them as “obedient children”. As Christians, we’ve been reborn into God’s family He is our Father and now that we are saved from sin we can be obedient to Him.

It really hit me that one of the best examples Bobby and I can live for Tyler is one of holiness because that is God’s standard. He is calling us to live holy lives, without making excuses and without lowering the standard. I would love for Tyler to be like his earthly father, but what I want him most to exemplify is how his daddy is striving to be like his heavenly Father. I always need to be reminded that my words and actions can display the gospel. So many people are looking on wondering if Christianity really works. One of those people might someday be Tyler. One of the main things I hope he will know is that Mom and Dad are obedient to their Father.