One of the cool things about having small people is that you now have a “get out of jail free” card for any occasion that you may wish to avoid.
Oh, yes, my Elves have been used to get out of many an occasion when ordinarily I would rather pull out my toenails with rusty tweezers but have been obliged to go.
The down side to that is that now they are getting bigger – read “more socialised” – I now have to “bite the bullet” and at least attempt to take them to things.
With the Big Elf having just started at the local Catholic School, and the small one attending the adjoining preschool, I thought it was high time I started taking them to church outside of weddings and christenings.
My first inkling that it might not go as well as I had hoped was during Mr 5’s second week at school, when in preparation for the once a term all school Mass, the class had spent the morning in the Church and Mr 5 had gotten in trouble for his constant chatter and was eventually removed from his friends and made to *gasp* sit next to his teacher. Wow, his 5 year old classmates almost knocked me flat in the rush to tell me that my Big Elf had been a “baddie” at Church in the morning and had gotten his small self into trouble and by the time I reached the class room to talk to the teacher, I was worried we would be expelled for enrolling a small heathen into this lovely school. Our lovely teacher reassured me that it was completely normal behaviour for new entrants and promised me all would be well on the day. Turns out that I had nothing to worry about, Big Elf was perfectly behaved during the entire thing. While the Mass went well, the large Elf proclaimed that he thought the “The man in the dress was a bit boring” so thus I decided at that moment to begin taking the Elves to mass on a more regular basis to avoid a similar commotion towards the end of the next term.
My first few attempts at Sundays didn’t work out one way or another, however when speaking to the parish Chaplin, I discovered that there was Mass at 5 pm on a Saturday evening and I happened upon (what I thought) was a ingenious idea! I could drop the Man Of The House (who refuses to set foot in a church, lest it cave in) at the pub in time for happy hour, take the Elves to mass, bribe them with McDonalds to behave and make it home to see the headlines of the news.
Great idea in theory, however I hadn’t reckoned on school mass having such a deep and lasting effect on the Big Elf. When we arrived, he said at the top of his wee voice (and the acoustics of our beautiful church are fantastic, so it travelled nicely) “Awww Mum that man in the dress is here and he’s BORING” and followed that wee gem up with “Mum this song is BORING” and finishing with a round of “Mum this is BORING can we get McDonalds now?” all the while playing chasey under the seats with the Smaller Elf. Giving them money to put in the collection plates proved a disaster as well, with the Small Elf wondering (again, loudly) how we could get McDonalds if we give “all our money to the man”. Conversation with Father was cut short when he spoke to us at the end as I could see the word “Boring” forming on the Large Elf’s lips, and I hot tailed it out into the carpark and headed for the golden arches, that altar of mass production and trans fats. Needless to say were home with our McDonalds in time to see the news. I have yet to come up with a more fool proof plan to get the children to mass without the hysterics, however we won’t be attending this week, as I have toenails to remove…
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