John and Gus go to Church. Mom goes Insane.

I got a taste of what my Wednesday nights during Advent will be like on Friday night at our church's joint Reformation service.  Hopefully they won't all be this bad, there were some extenuating circumstances, and to be fair to the boys I'll elaborate a bit.

1.  Hans took John to the doctor on Thursday to check on his cough that has been keeping him up at night for the past few nights.  Since they were already at the doctor's office John got his flu shot by a woman who was not accustom to giving shots to kids.  John got stuck three times before the nurse was finally able to administer the vaccine and in one fell swoop my son no longer loves going to the doctor.  While the shot had nothing to do with his behavior on Friday night, his lack of sleep probably had a lot to do with it.
2.  Gus is just in an unhappy stage of life right now.  He badly wants to crawl, but given the opportunity, he doesn't want to be on the floor for more than 2 minutes at a time.  Therefore, there have been a lot of tears shed around here lately as I refuse to pick him up right away...if he gets mad enough, he'll realize he can crawl.
3.  John went to the Halloween party at the preschool on Friday morning.

BUT both boys had a nice 2 hour nap Friday afternoon.

Now that I feel I have properly defended my boys let me share with you their evil ways.  As I said earlier this was a joint Reformation service.  The pastors at Mt. Calvary (our church), Mt. Zion, Hope and Emmaus decided this would be a great idea to do it again since it went well last year.  Since you'd be hard pressed to find a decent sized group of people who would forgo trick or treating they all decided to have the service on Friday night.  The service started at 7 which means bedtime fell somewhere around the second homily.  We didn't even start the service without a fit since John wanted to sit with his friends (other PK's) and was not only relentless in telling me this, but also rolled under our pew and crawled across the isle to get to their pew...twice.  Five minutes into the service, Gus, who was going through the diaper bag, spotted his bottle and started shrieking.  Do you think that bottle actually had formula in it?  Nope, that would be too easy.  Gus had eaten just an hour before, but there is something about seeing a bottle that gets him into a frenzy.  I quickly made Gus the bottle, hoping to get him to calm down before the opening hymn was over. I succeeded and gave myself a mental pat on the back for a job well done, at that moment I had two quiet kids.  But, it was just for that moment, for not 3 minutes later John started whining that he was hungry and he wanted his daddy and he wanted to see his friends and ...

John finally settled down and laid his head on my shoulder.  All was quiet again.  A few minutes later I heard some snickering from the elderly couple behind me and I turned to look down at John and out of the corner of my eye I saw him hanging over the back of the pew.  Since he was still resting his head on my shoulder I'm not sure how I missed the beginning of this.  I sat Gus next to me on the pew and heaved John back on to the pew.  "I want my daddy" he whispered loudly, I'm not sure you could even call that a whisper. "You will see him after church, but if you do that again I guarantee you will not want to be asking for your daddy."  Putting the fear in him just doesn't work right now.  Sometimes I'll say if you do that again you're going to get a spanking and then he just yells "BUT I DON'T WANT TO GET A SPANKING" embarrassing me to no end.  So, threatening to inform his daddy of his misbehavior doesn't phase him at all because Hans is, by far, his favorite parent.  Hans thinks it is because of all of their bonding time the year I worked when we lived in Ft. Wayne, I think it is because I'm the one who does the majority of the disciplining since I'm home more now.

Back to the service.  As I was threatening John, Gus somehow managed to get a hold of a hymnal and was trying to eat it.  This is a very sticky, or should I say slobbery, situation to be in because I wanted to get the hymnal out of his hands without tearing any pages. I got the hymnal away but he was crushed and just burst into tears.  I got the kids quiet again and then Gus starting spitting, loudly, and talking, dadadadadadada.  John thought this was funny so he started copying Gus. Both boys were having a grand time mimicking each other and would interject laughter here and there.  After several minutes I was able to get everyone settle again and then John went into his 'I want daddy, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, is it over' routine .  He took a small break, maybe to gather his thoughts, and laid his head on my shoulder. It looked like he was about to go to sleep when, out of nowhere, Gus smacks him right in the face.  This started the spitting, dadadadadaing and laughing.  Some how I survived.  Actually I should say, somehow they survived.  After the last hymn John bolted for the stairs, knowing there would be cookies and punch down there.  He is very aware of the fact that he does not get to partake in the after service festivities when he has acted like that in church and I'm betting he was hoping I wouldn't be the mean mom in front of non-members.  Au contraire, I bundled up Gus, went downstairs and led John out to the car, screaming.  Both boys screamed all the way home.  We arrived at home and I put Gus in his crib where he quickly fell asleep.  While I was putting Gus to sleep, John curled up in our bed and fell asleep.  When I  started to change him into his pajamas he mumbled, "I'm sorry you got so mad at me tonight Mommy.  Maybe next time you won't get so mad."  He has already learned how to apologize without actually apologizing.  When do kids start realizing the whole cause and effect thing?

Both boys are actually pretty good in church, but all bets are off at night services.  I have a little over a month before I have to do this again, in the meantime I'll pray for strength.