Cry Room Chronicles XXII

We are starting to solidify into 9:30 a.m. Mass goers. Lucy is maintaining her "sleeping past 7 a.m." standard (why can't Jacob adopt that too!?!), so 8 a.m. Mass may not be feasible for the foreseeable future. It worked out okay for us, though. We actually arrived early this week and, contrary to earlier reports, we decided to give the main church a try again.

The children weren't too antsy in the pew in front of the choir. We had the full contemporary choir: many different instruments and about twenty singers. They invited us to sing a prelude song, the ever popular "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." That was a satisfying start for the congregation and for Jacob and Lucy. Mass began. The children were giving mommy some extra love. Lucy sat on mommy's lap while Jacob sat with his back against mommy and pushing his legs off me. Not the most comfortable arrangement but they were reasonably quiet. As Mass progressed the children got more rambunctious. Lucy started taking all the books out of the back of the pew and handing them to us. Jacob started to crawl all over and to increase his decibels slowly. We eventually retreated to the children's chapel when the homily started.

The chapel wasn't very full, mostly older kids who seemed like they'd be okay upstairs. I wasn't quite sure what they were doing there. Lucy decided to poop towards the end of the homily, so she was being changed in the bathroom when the usher came for the collection. Jacob put in our donation with a smile on his face. Jacob decided to poop during the Our Father, so I changed him after the sign of peace. He shook a few hands but didn't work the whole room. After the diaper change, most people had already headed upstairs for communion. We caught up. Lucy wanted to put money in the poor box (this week collection for fish of Howard County...I mean FISH of Howard County). Jacob was off with mommy doing something else. I don't know if we made another donation to the book shelf fund. Like last week, after communion Jacob came back to the cry room directly without passing the choir and watching them for the rest of the Mass. It was too cold out for the playground so we headed straight home.

We missed most of the homily during the transition from upstairs to downstairs and with the diaper change, so I can't provide much of a recap. Father must have told a funny joke because we heard laughter as we were walking down the stairs. Toward the end he talked about being willing to accept our place in God's plan, which might seem quite insignificant in the big picture. But we don't really have the proper big picture view, do we? If only we could see the world with God's eyes, we'd have a much better understanding of what is important and what isn't.