Jane Says:

I'm laying on the couch this afternoon when Jane comes over and says:
"Mommy! Your eyes are cracking! See all the red lines?"
Me: "That's because I'm tired. I need to go to bed."
Jane wanders off behind me then comes back and moves in real close to my face. Then I say:
"Jane! Your eyes are cracking, too!"
Wrong thing to say, apparently. She starts making her nervous "uh, uh, uh" noise.
Jane: "do I have all the red lines?"
And I can see panic flashing across her face and she is on the verge of tears.
So I say:
"Quick! Close your eyes!" and she immediately obeys. In the past, she's struggled to obey the command to "close your eyes." Usually she either covers them with her hand, still open of course, or scrunches her nose. But under fear of your eyeballs cracking open, she learned quickly!
Then she opens them a second and I say:
"Keep them closed!"
And then she says:
"But I need to see!"
Me: "Just one more second! OK, open your eyes!"
Jane: "Are the cracks all gone?"
Me: "Yep! Because you closed your eyes, they needed to rest."
Jane: "And faith!"
Gotta admit, at this point, I was basking a bit in a ray of Mom Satisfaction. It did much to balance out the biting fiasco that happened several hours earlier, stay tuned for that.
Me: "That's right. And faith."
Jane: "My cracks are all gone because it had faith."
We talked for a minute about the story of Jesus healing the blind man that we had read just the other day together. And then she scampered off to play some more with her much missed toys.
At this point, my basking was over and I was sobered, in a good way, to how easy it is to teach small children. Anything. They are little sponges and I gotta seize the day.