Living with Noah

This boy is something else. Today, the whole church was witness to it.

This morning, we arrived at church early to go to a meeting for the nursery workers. Noah had to go with us, because all the nursery workers were supposed to be at this meeting, so there wasn't any child care at that time. He did great. A few other parents were in the same pickle, so there were a handful of kids playing at one end of the room while a meeting went on. He was happy as could be.

We dropped him off in the nursery and headed off to the service, confident that he'd do fine. He is great in there--he is not one of those kids who needs their parent for 10 minutes while they transition; in fact, we get lots of compliments from other nursery workers on how easy he is and how well he plays with the other kids.

So I was surprised when we got buzzed a little while into the church service. I told Nathan I'd go check it out and headed back up to the nursery. Turns out that Noah was not doing so well. We hadn't considered the fact that he got a terrible night's sleep (for some reason he kept waking up crying, and we never figured out why--bad dream? teething?). He had just been kind of whiny for a while, which is why they paged us, but then as soon as I walked in, he tripped and fell, which was the last straw for the poor kid. He totally lost it. He wailed for "Daaaaaaddy!", who is his absolute favorite person right now.

I took him out of the nursery, but then my problem was how to tell Nathan that we needed to go. There were a good 40 minutes left of the service, and he wasn't likely to come looking for us--he'd probably just assume I stayed in the nursery with Noah. I realized it was pretty dumb for me to have left my purse (and therefore, my phone) in the pew with Nathan, when the easiest thing to do would have been to text him that we needed to leave. My only option was to walk into the sanctuary and go get him. We had to sit near the front today, too, dadgummit.

Since Noah was already unhappy, I knew he probably would not go into the sanctuary quietly. I considered leaving him with the nice greeter lady who we kind of know, but I knew he'd lose it again. So I risked taking him into the sanctuary and walking all the way down to the front to grab Nathan. Maybe I should explain that our church is a little on the formal side, and although there is frequently a crying baby in the service, there is never a yelling toddler. Plus, the pastor was about 15 minutes into his sermon, and I didn't want to cause a big distraction. I was hoping we would come out of this unscathed and that Noah would be quiet, even though he was upset and loudly whining and asking for his Daddy.

Thinking that it would be good to occupy his loud mouth, I pulled out his sippy cup and asked him if he wanted a drink. That was a good plan, except that he didn't need to drink for as long as it took us to get down the aisle. However, he was pretty good until we saw Nathan. I walked up to where we had been sitting, quickly motioned to Nathan that we needed to go, and spun and quickly started to walk out. This turned out to be kind of a bad move, because Noah got upset that we were walking away from Daddy, and started wailing his name again. Loudly. In the middle of the service. Loudly. I covered his mouth with my hand, but that didn't do much good.

So there we were, walking back down that aisle that never seemed longer, with Noah loudly wailing for Daddy, and all the people kind of looking at us and snickering (though not unkindly). I think we must have been a sight to see. What's more, when we got to the lobby of the church, Noah let out a piercing scream, which I know must have been audible in the sanctuary. I was a little paranoid and extra embarrassed, wondering how much of a disruption we actually were and hoping it wasn't that bad. I will have to ask my friends if it was as bad as it seemed to me at the time, but then, I was the one with the really loud kid yelling in my ear.

Sigh. My mom did always tell me that your kids will humble you.

------

Here are some pics of this crazy kid.

Here he is, looking all innocent, after covering himself in dental floss.

Bathtime Jedi