{Posed on his own in the $2.99 jammies. Then Mike taught him The Kid 'n Play}
So as parents, I am sure there are silly ways we go about being a family in the privacy of our own home that might not be the norm. And you don't think much about until such things are brought to light in a public setting. Child flatulence, for instance, never ceases to crack us up. Call it the inner immaturity within us, call it what you will. But it's hilarious to us when our kids rip one. And it's even more hilarious when they come of the age to crack up about it, too. It's not something we have spent a great deal of time thinking about as parents, how to teach our children to manage the natural passing of gas in a public setting. Until now.
So in our church there is a time in the chapel where people are most reverent. It's during both prayers and the passing of the sacrament. It's also a time when parents are sweating bullets to keep their kids quiet, solemn, and peaceful. Thankfully, our kids were doing a pretty good job of this on Sunday. And then Zane ripped one. Not just a little one, a giant one that vibrated deeply through the fabric of the padded pew and ricocheted off the wood and then smacked us across the face on the way back up. It was a man fart. It could have easily been Mike's, but by the look on Zane's proud face it clearly was not.
Mike and I looked at each other with the typical plastered grins we exchange when our kids make loud noises from their bums. And then we froze with words, Zane was giggling and we couldn't pull together a straight face between the two of us to turn the event into a teaching moment. All was lost. And then. It gets better. Zane is even more proud we can't hold back our smiles and lifts a cheek, presses the air out of his stomach with all the might his little body can muster. Sacrament bread is heading our way and out pops a machine-gun load of toots from my four year old's rear end. It was like 13 in a row and his smile got wider as he let them rip; each louder than the last. We had no chance. We never recovered from round one, how on earth were we supposed to pull ourselves together and speak coherently now?
He sits pleased as punch, the most reverent of any other moment in the history of this child sitting through church. Tears are streaming from my eyes as I cover my face with a green hymnal to hide the explosion of laughter building in my red cheeks. I peek over at Mike to see him unable to address the situation either, looking down at his shoes while working hard to lose that smile.
How do you think Jesus would teach the little children to manage their gas?
So in our church there is a time in the chapel where people are most reverent. It's during both prayers and the passing of the sacrament. It's also a time when parents are sweating bullets to keep their kids quiet, solemn, and peaceful. Thankfully, our kids were doing a pretty good job of this on Sunday. And then Zane ripped one. Not just a little one, a giant one that vibrated deeply through the fabric of the padded pew and ricocheted off the wood and then smacked us across the face on the way back up. It was a man fart. It could have easily been Mike's, but by the look on Zane's proud face it clearly was not.
Mike and I looked at each other with the typical plastered grins we exchange when our kids make loud noises from their bums. And then we froze with words, Zane was giggling and we couldn't pull together a straight face between the two of us to turn the event into a teaching moment. All was lost. And then. It gets better. Zane is even more proud we can't hold back our smiles and lifts a cheek, presses the air out of his stomach with all the might his little body can muster. Sacrament bread is heading our way and out pops a machine-gun load of toots from my four year old's rear end. It was like 13 in a row and his smile got wider as he let them rip; each louder than the last. We had no chance. We never recovered from round one, how on earth were we supposed to pull ourselves together and speak coherently now?
He sits pleased as punch, the most reverent of any other moment in the history of this child sitting through church. Tears are streaming from my eyes as I cover my face with a green hymnal to hide the explosion of laughter building in my red cheeks. I peek over at Mike to see him unable to address the situation either, looking down at his shoes while working hard to lose that smile.
How do you think Jesus would teach the little children to manage their gas?
