Is This Normal?

This is a question I ask myself a lot as a parent.  Especially as a parent of Nathan. 

This morning Jilly and I were playing in her doll house.  It's new and she doesn't have a lot of furniture yet.  We had a great idea to empty the basket we use for her hair things and use it as a bed.  It was perfect and she loved it!

Here is the daddy taking his afternoon nap.

I hate to ruin what's coming, but I feel like I should preface the rest of this story with some background information.  Last fall Marc's Grandma passed away.  We called her Oma.  This was the first experience my boys had had with losing someone they loved.  I did a lot of stressing before the funeral about whether to let them look at her or not....how I would handle things....the typical parent worries.  Things turned out to be much smoother than I expected.  I had no intention of letting them see Oma's body.  I explained that it wasn't her anyway and she was with Jesus.  However, when the time came, they were imagining things that were so much worse.  I decided to let them look.  They handled it just fine.  I think it satisfied their curiosity a little bit.  Calvin was very mature at the funeral.  Handled things beautifully...no issues.   Then there was Nathan.  For some reason, all of this excited him a lot.  He thought the whole process was just thrilling.  At one point during the service he told my Dad, "We're going to put Oma in the ground and have some sandwiches!"  Even as a four year old, he didn't mean for this to be disrespectful.  He was just spelling out what would come next.  Nathan was actually great to have around that day...he balanced out all the sadness very nicely.

Ever since that day, Nathan has had a bit of an interest in burying things.  My mom got him a garden set for his birthday.  He grabbed the shovel right away and said, "Hey...I can bury things with this!"

AND we're back to today.  Jillian and I left the bed with the dollhouse and carried on with our day.  When Nathan had been home from school for a little while I went back into Jillian's room and found this:

I walked over to pick up the books and Nathan quickly shouted, "Don't move those!  That guy is buried!"  In removing the books I noticed that, indeed, the uncle was in a casket.

At this point, Nathan asked me to help him move the man to the other room so we could "talk about him".  He asked Jillian and I to sit on the couch so he could say a few words.

Like any experienced pastor he picked up his mic and said, "Check baby Check baby 1 2 3"