Sundays and Toddlers

Jeff was sick today. Which left me to battle Eli alone at church. Gum and cars kept him entertained through the opening song. Then he got wiggly and crazy as he always does. When he started yelling just for fun, I put my hand over his mouth to try to quiet him. He thought that was hilarious. Which encouraged him to continue in his yelling. Which resulted in me plastering a don't-worry-about-me-I-have-this-under-control smile on my face as I calmly whisked Eli out of the meeting.

That whole scene happened twice.

Shortly after our third attempt to sit "reverently" on the pew, a little boy came over to me, thinking his mom was sitting on our row. I showed the boy that his mom was actually on the row in front of ours and gave his mom a how-cute-your-kid-accidentally-thought-I-was-you-for-half-of-a-second smile.

Church is full of smiles.

Until you realize that in the split second you were talking to the cute lost boy, you happened to have lost your own boy. Eli was completely out of sight and I immediately imagined him running laps around the chapel, arms flailing in pure glee.

Cue stomach wrenching fear, wide eyes and shortness of breath.

The people behind me (luckily our neighbors) tapped me on the back and pointed to Eli who had just successfully crawled under the bench to their pew. I remained calm and applied my I-don't-really-know-what-to-do-but-my-child-is-actually-happy-in-sacrament-meeting-so-until-he-screams-I'm-not-going-to-interfere smile.

Eli played happily for the last 15 minutes of church -- making today our most successful Sacrament Meeting to date.

And here are some unrelated pictures. Carson and Eli playing together this morning:

 I thought our boys were cute, but just look at how cute our girls would be!

Carson is completely interested in the camera whenever I have it out. I love it because he's always looking at the camera when I take pictures! Makes for too many cute pictures to choose from. So I'll just include several from when he was helping me cook today.