The church glare

It's funny how different people react to different things.

My kids are wiggly in church. They are very busy people under normal circumstances, always doing something to play or move or manipulate objects. Church is hard for them and getting them to sit still is a constant work in progress. Of course they'll get there. But I feel their pain. After being in nursery or dealing with young children for so long my own attention span has waned over the years until a normal meeting where I don't have kids to shush feels painfully long. Man isn't much help since he deals with his boredom by playing with them. They do different high five games (up in space -- in your face; cut the pickle -- tickle tickle tickle!), he pokes them, or whatever it takes to keep them both happy. I often feel as if I have an extra kid to shush. He used to just snooze through the meeting and I'd elbow him and he'd say he was just closing his eyes to listen or some crap like that.

This past Sunday was Stake Conference. It's a 2 hour sermon, instead of a 1 hour sacrament meeting broken up by songs with 2 addition classes afterward. Those two hours are very long to little people. We sat in the second row back, right in sight of the Mission President's Wife (which I think is an official title in some circles). It seemed that she was of the philosophy that young children should sit still as mold during Important Gospel Instruction even though most of it is over the heads of the 3 year olds we were sitting among. She glared at us every time Frieda squawked, glared at us when Tag laughed at Man, glared at us when Princess forgot to use a total whisper voice. Is seems that she was so distracted by us that she rarely got any Important Gospel Instruction of her own unless she was giving her own talk about compassion and heeding the directions of the Spirit. It may not have helped that I didn't look very miserable with my brood teeming about me, my eyes fixed either on the speaker or on the Dot Game Tag made up for my edification and delight (with occasional glances to see if her penciled eyebrows would disappear entirely in her scowl).

The elderly lady sitting behind us just smiled and told me I had beautiful kids.

I smiled back, because I know they're beautiful, and just as imperfect as I am. Who wants perfect kids? Booooo-ooooring.

Last night we watched an episode of House. A guy in an airplane (SPOILER!!!) was diagnosed with the bends when someone pushed on his joints, which eased the pain he was in. Afterward the kids and I talked about how deep in the water someone might dive, and how heavy water is when you go deep.

Me: He might go down so deep that 15 houses stacked on top of each other would barely poke out of the water.

Princess: on their sides, or just top to bottom?

Me: Top to bottom.

Tag: Well, what if he used toy houses? Then he wouldn't hurt so much.

Me: [pause] Um, they don't actually use houses to measure how deep they go.

Tag: I know, but toy houses is shorter. He should only go down toy houses.

Princess: If you soaked the houses in water, would they fall apart?

Me: [sigh] Parts of them would, maybe.

Today was day two of circuit training. Man, stetching afterward might have made this past weekend far less painful. Back we go again tomorrow for cardio. Today I was able to run for a bit without hurting too badly. Slow progress is my friend.