Where was the Papparazi?

What do you get when you combine a movie/rock star, a bottomless pit & a never resting organizer/hair stylist/eye checker together?

Answer: US, this weekend attempting to go to church with 3 toddlers on Saturday night!

The weekend as a whole with all of the kids went very smoothly, but we had no idea that the hardest part of the whole weekend would be taking these kids to Mass! Let me give you the rundown.

We arrived at one of the neighboring churches about 10 mins early where we then met up with my sister, Beth, & her husband. It was agreed that we would all try to sit together in order to help with all of the kids (4 adults against 3 kids-we thought for sure that we had them beat~little did we know just how tough our opposition was!) :)

We all sat together Beth & Neil in one pew & the rest of us sitting behind them in then next pew.
We thought that we were prepared with the best of weapons-drinks & crackers, but then the 1 1/2 year old bottomless pit made her first move with a polite sounding "Dink?" (drink)
So I gave it to her-she then proceeded to CHUG down the drink at which point the almost 3 year old movie/rock star asked for a drink (Oh no, I realized at this point we might be up against tougher odds than I initially thought!) & I forced the bottomless pit to share her drink. She then proceeded to get upset so I distracted her with a cracker-pheeewww, 2 happy toddlers. Until I realized that now the movie/rock star was chugging the drink like there was no tomorrow! I got her distracted with a cracker too & hid the cup, just in time for church to start (that's right-our weapons of "Mass" distraction were down to almost no drinks left & a few crackers BEFORE church had even started!)

Church starts-I notice that all of the readings were very short this week-God forgive me, but I was thankful because I knew that church might be shorter this way-little did I know that God had other plans in mind. The priest announced that he wouldn't have a homily, but instead that we would be watching a video sent from the bishop (I knew we were in for it then because there was NO way that would be short!) After about 20-30 mins of viewing that, the priest then conducted a baptism before going on with Mass. Meanwhile, during all of these activities, I was trying to ration the crackers between the movie star & the bottomless pit while Scott was trying to wrangle the 1 1/2 year old never resting organizer/hair stylist/eyechecker who couldn't decide whether the books should be IN or OUT of the book holder.

I somehow managed to get the bottomless pit distracted AND handed off to Beth, where she remained for the rest of church wonderfully distracted by all of the activity going on in the pew behind her (us!) Scott passes the never resting organizer to me who then morphs into the hair stylist/eyechecker. He proceeds to try to poke my eyes out with his fingers while saying "Eyes" & then pull/mess up my hair to give me some very intense hugs all while the bottomless pit in the pew in front of us giggles away. The movie star pulls her sunglasses out of the diaper bag & puts them on just in time for communion, you betcha, she walked up the aisle in true movie star fashion with her sunglasses on & one lens missing~classy :)

The priest gave me a glance & just smiled (somehow I think he knew we had our hands full & were losing the battle) & the movie star enjoyed her adoring audience as we walked back to our pew in the middle of church. Thank heavens, church had finally ended & we still had a few swallows left in the sippy cups & some cracker crumbs left in my coat pocket (where I had tried to hide them at some point during all of this chaos.) We soon realized that our normal 45 mins Mass was actually 1 hour & 15 mins long! No wonder we lost the fight ;) (yeah right, who am I kidding-we would have lost no matter what!)

It was definitely an eye opening experience & hopefully we'll be better prepared the next time around, but at least we were all there together which in the end was the most important part of all! :)