I've been really bad with children my whole life. Most of the time I don't know what to do with them or how to talk to them - I just feel awkward around kids. I've avoided teaching children's Sabbath school like plague haha (I think I've only done it once in my life), and when I think of all the teaching I've done, I've always had grown-ups sitting in my class room, never children. I've considered it to be one thing that has made me very different from my mum who taught children her whole life (all those countless Sabbath school and Pathfinders' classes and the piano lessons and singing classes!) and who was always loved and respected by them. I've been like, nope, that's not for me, I need adults.

Thus it's just overwhelmingly sweet when some special children find their way around my awkwardness and uneasiness and hang out with me and think that I'm actually cool and all. When it happens, I feel a bit embarrassed and I'm like, hey little dudes, I don't really deserve you being so nice to me. It's a good thing children don't care too much about my quiet apologies.

Things have started to shift lately, I've noticed. No, I still don't feel like crashing a children's Sabbath school class but I'm increasingly enjoying spending time with them. I think my cousins kids have a lot to do with it - the way they insist on me showing them pictures and explaining things from a National Geographic magazine or the way they demonstrate their swimming skills or the way they count me in when it comes to playing with Lego, well, it has pretty much disarmed me. And there are some other children as well. Just yesterday evening I found a new best friend in Tartu when we shot the new episodes for our church's video program. This sweet three year old child just shows up and decides that two of us need to hang out the whole evening, and I mean, who am I to disagree, right! So that's what we did. The evening couldn't have been lovelier.

And I think I'm just a tad more like my mum again. It makes me very happy, very happy indeed.

Yesterday with E.