A glimpse...

Every now and then we get a brief glimpse into what Little Bitty is thinking about. The "inner Bitty," if you will. As I have mentioned before, truly spontaneous speech, unprompted and unscripted, is rare. On the other hand, there is insight to be found in speech of the prompted and/or scripted variety too, of course. I have a whole other post coming together on that ;).

So, we've been helping Bitty learn to pray, now that he is beginning to show interest and even wanting to participate in family prayers for the first time. It's very cute to listen to him, although a bit painful on the ears as he likes to shout his prayers, with ear-splitting emphasis on the last word in every phrase (think Dick Vitale on steroids and with a bullhorn, and you're at least getting close, lol).

Since we started out by helping him with what to say and letting him repeat each phrase, he quickly took to saying the whole thing on his own, with every phrase said twice, lol. Just the way he heard it, right?

The words are hard to make out, but I know that Heavenly Father understands every word :).

Somewhere along the way (because we hadn't gotten to the step of teaching him this part yet) he figured out that part of praying is expressing what you're thankful for. He hears his big brothers giving thanks for everything under the sun in their prayers (I soo love listening to them :)). Maybe he interprets it as listing things that make you happy, who knows, but the result is pretty much the same. Because the other night, that's what he started doing, all on his own. He even stopped screeching as he said:

"(mumble mumble) Cwow nie... ["Cloud 9" is the name of a game he has that he likes to play with]
(mumble mumble) Thomas...
(mumble mumble) books...
(mumble mumble) chwocka miwk...
(mumble mumble) Appoo Jacks..."

I interpreted the indecipherable mumble to be something along the lines of "I'm thankful for." He finished it off with a rousing "Ay-MEH!!!" (had to bring the screaming back to finish up strong, lol) and dh and I just looked at each other.

"Did he just list the things he is thankful for?"
"Yeah, I think he did!"

If we had asked him, "Hey Bitty, what are you thankful for?" he would not have been able to answer. The most likely response would be, "fay-thul por" (thankful for).

And yet, in the context of offering a prayer, he was able to share some of the things he is thankful for. It was a blessing to hear him.

He hasn't done that again since, but he has *sort of* toned down the shrieking when he prays, and that is a blessing too ;). I'm sure the neighbors down the street who could probably HEAR his loudness think so too, hehe.






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