Blog clean up

When looking for a story to post this week, I checked my plethora of drafts where I’ve housed snippets of funny things to save for later.

It’s later.

So prepare yourself for a series disjointed stories while I clean up my draft folder. For instance:

Donut hands

Some churches provide donuts after Mass for parishioners to munch while they mingle. This is a great bribery tool for parents who want their children to behave well at church. One son drew his Mother’s attention to his folded hands during Mass, saying “Look, Mom, donut hands!”

And here’s a little something from a friend of mine who teaches religion. This is CLASSIC!

I had my students do a journal entry for Isaac when he was going to be sacrificed by Abraham. Here is the end of one girl’s entry:
“….We sacrificed a ram instead. Then we went home, and as we were walking, my father said to me,

The excitement we had at church on Sunday

My husband is so lucky that we only have girls. Whenever we’re out someplace public like the zoo, Legoland, a grocery store, or church, and a child has to go to the bathroom, it’s automatically the female parent who has to take her. Yeah for me.

This especially came in handy (for my husband) at church Sunday when one child announced, never quietly, that she needed to pee. Of course, we always make them go before we leave home, but as she is relatively new to the potty trained world, I wasn’t taking my chances on her sincerity,  ploy to avoid some pew time or not.

When we left the bathroom, she swiftly yanked her arm away from me so she could run to the back of the church, make a U-turn around the end of the row of pews, and stream back down the center aisle to our seats near the front. Awesome.

And of course, I had barely gotten back to my place when

I haven’t heard that particular version

I’d hate to see what an image of the alternative would look like.

My two-year-old daughter’s favorite song these days is Jingle Bells. She sings it all the time and has started experimenting with alternate lyrics. At Mass on Sunday, during the readings when everyone is attentively listening to the word of God, she looked up at me and said,

Probably not future nuns

 

 

Napolean gets down (Photo credit: massless)

 

My three kids are starting to behave much better at church. Either that, or, I’m just so used to their bad behavior that I’ve become jaded. Regardless, on what I thought was a relatively well-behaved Sunday, a mysterious turning point in the Mass alerted my five-year-old to something very special. Perhaps it was a tell-tale word or two from the priest, when my daughter suddenly announced:

Not something you normally see at church

I’m sure many mothers out there know that when your child is eating something, while you are out and about, and that item falls on the ground, without a nearby trash can, that item will end up in the nearest pocket of your diaper bag, where it is promptly forgotten, usually turning into crumbs by the time it is discovered again.

This occurred when on of my children was eating a traditional white, round Christmas cookie. It fell on the ground, was quickly stowed in my bag, and forgotten. If only it had been smooshed into crumbs.

At church, several days later, upon finding our pew, I leaned to pick up the toddler from the aisle, diaper bag on my shoulder, when the forgotten cookie rolled out onto the middle of the floor. My excited three-year-old daughter, knowing this cookie only by its irreverent family nickname, exclaimed loudly,

What a holy little boy!

Window at Parish Church of St Peter, Frampton Cotterell, England (Photo credit: DanieVDM)

I was sitting in the last pew at church, nursing the baby. When one of my nursing pads became full, I replaced it with a new one and set the old one down on the seat next to me. Before I could stop him, my five-year-old son grabbed the soggy white circle, stuck it on the top of his head, and ran up the aisle yelling,

Is it snowing in here?

When our daughter was three, she had a pink dress with very fine feather trimming.  During church, she discovered that she could pull off a small clump of feathers and toss them into the air. They would then float down ever so slowly. In her excitement, she started to squeal. We looked over to see

Ta-dah!

My two-year-old daughter was an aspiring nudist. It was not uncommon to find her in the backyard naked with princess high heels pushing her baby in the baby stroller. Around the house it was annoying but did not cause us real concern until Sunday. During church, she stepped out into

A Lesson in how NOT to talk to a priest

At my daughter’s baptism, the priest asked, “What name do you give this child?” We told him, and when the priest repeated the name, my four-year-old son pointed violently at the priest and yelled,