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:

Lord, let me blend in with the wall!

St. Peter’s Basilica at Early Morning (Photo credit: Wikipedia) P.S. This wasn’t the church I was at!

When my youngest was born, she made her first church appearance just a few days later. Being understandably tired, we didn’t make it to our usual Mass, but went to an 11:00 a.m. at a church I’m not as familiar with. The baby slept wonderfully through Mass until just before the end. When she began to cry, I picked her up and looked around for a private hidey-hole in which to discreetly feed her. Then I spotted a folding  chair in a dark corner, far from any people. Perfect!

A minute later, Mass was over and I soon discovered a crucial architectural structure that I had previously overlooked:

I get that a lot

A deacon, though not quite as intimidating. (Wikipedia)

A four-year-old skipped into the vestibule ahead of her mother and skidded to a stop at the Deacon’s feet. Dressed in white, six feet tall and broad-shouldered, he was an intimidating sight. She stared up at him, open-mouthed. After a moment of silence, she asked in awe:

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,

How’s that go again?

English: Front view of Angelo acquasantiera at Santa Maria degli Angeli, Rome. Holy water font. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My two-year-old after Mass was blessing himself with holy water saying “Father, Son,

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

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,

He sings like an angel

My two-year-old son was singing, or rather, belting out, the Alleluia in his best voice. The only problem was that he replaced the word “Alleluia” with