i went near church
Before I bust into my near church experience I should tell you about our teenage daughter. A few weeks ago she was sitting in the front pew during day camp at church and my wife went up to sit next to her and was met with the words, €œMom, get out of here, this is only for kids.€ Distancing herself from her family. So teenager. Further proof lies in her newfound ability to go to sleep after her parents and to wake up around 10/10:30 the next morning. That€™s our teenage daughter. On Thursday she€™ll be four.
Yesterday (Sunday) Jodi left for church at around 7 am as is her practice. Elsa (2 months) was awake and happy and so we were hanging out in our PJ€™s (more normal for her than me) and playing on the floor (equally normal for both of us) until about 9 a.m. when we went to wake up Lydia, who surprisingly woke up in a good mood. She didn€™t get out of bed, but she woke up happy and that€™s good, and rare. So I told her to come down for breakfast and to get ready for church and Elsa and I went back downstairs. And Elsa got hungry. So I started warming up a bottle of momma€™s finest and then proceeded with the always thrilling task of giving Elsa a bottle. With few exceptions Elsa gets 1 or 2 bottles a day, with even fewer exceptions it takes about 10 minutes of screaming (her not me) before she€™ll take a bottle. This is why Jodi stops by during the day and we visit mom at work. Oh that I could lactate€¦
So with all my focus on getting Elsa bottled up it didn€™t occur to me that Lydia had gone back to sleep. Until 9:45. Church is at 10.
Lydia hopped to, ate her Kashi, put on her dress, grabbed her offering money, and we bolted for church. We made it in time for the second reading, heard the special music, and midway threw the gospel Elsa was wet. So I went truckin€™ out of church with my bags of baby paraphernalia, Lydia following behind, and we changed Elsa at which point she made signs of being hungry. So I went back into church, grabbed the one bag I had left behind that held her chilled bottle and went out again. Why we had sat down in the third row is beyond me.
To the church kitchen, warmed up the bottle, started the scream fest in the narthex, by now the sermon€™s over, Elsa takes a bit of the bottle and falls asleep, and it€™s time for the offering. So of course we do want any normal family would do. We go out to the car to find Lydia€™s offering money that she had lost in the 5+ minute drive to Church. We found it hidden in the cup holder and heading back into church noticed two cyclists on the lawn in front of the church and waved hello and I asked where they were headed. Maine. As in the state. I said they better get going they still had a lot of ground to cover and they said not to worry, they weren€™t planning on getting there any time soon. They were both coming from Washington. The state. How cool is that? So I invited them in for water and air conditioning and they thanked me and we talked a bit as they ate peanut butter with their fingers out of a jar and then the girls and I went back into the church. We were just in time for the last two stanzas of the closing hymn.
This my friends is why I take my kids to church.