Monday, September 18, 2006

Wild Beast at Church

We’re working on getting Meredith to sit still and be quiet in church. She’s starting to do better – we’ve gone from one or two minutes to about ten minutes. Then, it’s off-to-nursery time.

We’ve been doing the typical things, like bringing books for her to look at while we’re seated. But now that she’s recognizing more objects and saying what they are, this isn’t working out so well.

Yesterday morning we handed her a book that happened to have a tiger on the first page. She opened the book and said, “Tigah! ROOOAAAAARRRR.” (She actually makes a very scary-sounding roar.)

Needless to say, I don’t think we’ll be bringing that book to church any more.

Just when we were wondering if it was worth it to take her in church for such a short period of time, she started coming to us (at home) and wanting us to sing with her from our church’s Psalter. Often we see her at home, sitting by herself with an open Psalter, softly singing random notes.

This is a good (and cute) reminder to us that our daughter needs to be in the church service – even if it ends up being only a few moments – learning to corporately worship God from an early age.

Incidentally, one of her newest favorite words is “bi-bah” (bible). She picked up on this after watching daddy read his bible in the mornings. The only problem is that she now thinks that EVERY large book that doesn’t have pictures in it is a bible.

Therefore, all of Kevin’s law books are now “bibles” and she happily declares this whenever she sees one! We’ve tried to tell her different but she just won’t have it.

Her other favorite words are “ace you” (thank you) and, just recently, Kevin taught her to say “attaché.”

He taught her this because she was constantly calling his book bag a “purse.” This, of course, was a severe affront to his masculinity.

Meredith’s favorite song right now is Ring-Around-the-Rosie and she often sings “ashes, ashes,” plops herself on the ground, and bursts into giggles. She also loves This Little Piggy and she’ll take her own hand and run it up her body, saying, “Wee, wee, wee.”

Meredith is our little buddy. She’s very playful and makes us laugh all the time. How we love her!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since Bible comes from the Latin neuter Biblia meaning "The Books” Meredith is probably correct in pointing to Kevin’s stack of books and balling them “bi-bah”.

Janice Phillips said...

Love to hear her little heart is God-ward at such a young age, even if right now it is because she wants to imitate you...isn't that what we should be doing, too? Imitating Christ?

And "attache" is so much more cultured and than the metro term "man-bag."

Megan said...

It's so fun to hear about Meredith - I miss her smiles & giggles! Babies are so precious.

Alaina said...

How sweet! And i'm sure no one minded the roar! :) We also LOVED your story about the storm windows gave us a much needed laugh. Thanks!

the Joneses said...

We've got both kids up to about twenty minutes in service. Addie actually could go through the entire thing, especially since she can read now. Stuart, on the other hand, occasionally reverts to his Wild Beast mode and is horrible.

I, too, wondered if it was worth the trouble. Then I realized that even when Stuart was lying on the floor or kicking the pews, he still knew all the responses and songs. So keep at it. You'll be rewarded with Meredith's early love for Jesus, even if church remains a bit of a struggle.

-- SJ

Rebecca said...

She is so cute. And sitting in church will only take time, we've had Tom burst out in a silly song before, I think everyone understands a little noise. :)

The Johnson Family Adventures said...

I can definitely relate to what you said about teaching a toddler to sit still in church! Michael is extremely wiggly, and I honestly think he is one of the loudest children in our church.
Meredith is quite the talker! I'm impressed with how many words she can say!
~Katie

Anonymous said...

Bla bla bla ba bla!

Debra said...

Peter and I know your pain! We just got both Hannah and Daniel to sit through an entire service quietly for the first time last week. The key for us was to have family devotions every day and "practice" sitting reverently. We use the same rules for family devotions as we use at church. We're far from perfect, but we are all enjoying the process. :-)