Cute (and Terrifying) Moments of the week (a 7QT post)

I’ve been really floundering on 7 Quick Takes lately, so this week I was determined to capture the funny moments as they happened. Ready?

#1: Subject: Michael

Sunday. Choir. During pre-Mass warmup Michael tripped over two–count ’em, two–microphone stands. “He’s really living up to his nickname today,” said one of our sopranos. But that was only his warmup. While I was conducting Grayson Warren Brown’s “God Be In My Head,” sung a cappella, at Communion–the beginning of Communion, while no one was yet going to Communion  in our 850-seat, completely full church, so the impact was fully maximized–Michael helped himself to the sound board slide controls. No self-respecting Mayhem would pull them down, of course. Only up. All the way up. With a resulting roar in the speakers you’ll just have to imagine. I corrected the damage almost instantly, but as the roar subsided I heard the entire gathering chuckling. Not just those close by us, but the whole works.

(My insecurity is telling me people are wagging their fingers at me for having him with me in the choir. There are no nursery volunteers anymore, so we have no choice but to bring him with us, and although we usually ask someone to keep him for us, he’d fallen asleep mid-Mass on that person’s shoulder and when he woke up he would only take Mommy. We do what we can.)

#2: Subject: Michael

At Alex’s piano lesson this week, one of the teacher’s children was playing with Michael. Trying to amuse him, she put marbles in her eyes,then ears. He was staring at her with great concentration. Then one of the marbles fell out of her ear and down into her shirt. She kept trying to find it and eventually had to pull up her shirt from the waistband to get at it. Michael, relieved to find an action he felt capable of imitating, pulled up his  shirt and stuck a marble on his belly button. And then looked perplexed that it wouldn’t stay put.

#3: Subject: Alex

Earlier this week the little boys and I baked a chocolate torte right before we picked Alex up from school. Michael’s face, post-baking, was covered with chocolate (it was a very gooey torte) but I didn’t realize how bad until I already had him out at the van. I didn’t have time to take him back inside, so he just went with a dirty face. When we got to school, Alex got in the van, took one look at Michael, and said, “Can I have what he had?”

#4: Subject: Nicholas

This week one of Christian’s coworkers asked if Nicholas could participate in a promotional video the university was making. They needed his voice to record a couple of lines for it: “Mizzou is Truman!” and “Mizzou is where I want to go someday.” We had to go to the NPR station to record it. The NPR station is tucked under the dome of the same building where Daddy works, so the little boys got to visit Daddy at work, too. Exciting stuff. Nicholas couldn’t quite grasp it. “So they’re gonna take pictures of my voice?” he asked.

#5: Subject: Julianna

Julianna began adaptive dance class this week. A picture will suffice. It’s not very good; sorry, I was taking pictures from a distance and to get it trimmed enough not to include other children’s faces, I had to sacrifice quality. Anyway, you get the idea.

#6: Subject: Danskos

I finally took the plunge and bought a pair of Dansko clogs. I am in love.

#7: Subject: Me

On a more sober note… Thursdays are a zoo in our house, with Nicholas going to half-day preschool and Alex having Scouts and various other activities after school, and my one regular flute student needing lessons on that day. So I set up with my student to have a lesson at school while we were waiting for Alex to finish with Cub Scouts. I’ll spare the extra complications (because there were a lot of them) and just say that we couldn’t leave for school until Julianna’s bus dropped her off. But the bus didn’t come, and didn’t come, and when it was half an hour late we weren’t going to get there in time to give the lesson before Alex finished with scouts. So I started making calls. The bus barn told me the bus left the school late; I called the student’s mother to ask what she wanted to do. By now she was getting ready to leave work to pick up her daughter. She suggested that she bring Alex home and we could have the lesson here. I said Great! Except you’re not on his pickup list, and they won’t let him go. Let’s see if we can get ahold of the scout master. Which she did…and at that moment, when she found the scout master at home, I discovered Alex did not have scouts at all.

I took a deep breath and called the after-care program, where they send kids who haven’t been picked up after school. They didn’t answer. I called the school office, but by now it was so late, they didn’t answer either. Then the after-care director picked up her voice mail and called me back, and said: “Alex did not check in at after care today.”

Thus began the worst ten minutes of my life. I called my cousin, who works in the parish office and lets Alex come over on Tuesdays until I can get there. I was hoping someone might have taken him there, but he wasn’t there. I completely fell apart. I told myself Alex knows his parents’ names, he knows his phone number, but mostly all I knew was that I didn’t know where my child was. And I couldn’t even go look for him because I was still waiting for Julianna’s bleepety-bleep bus!

It turned out he had art club–not Cub Scouts–I was right to schedule the lesson up at school, I just had the wrong after-school activity in my head. But I was a mess when Julianna finally got home. She came over to me and snuggled against my chest for fully three or four minutes while I pulled myself back together. File that one under Moments I Hope I Never Repeat.

All right, what an epic-length blog post. Sorry! I needed to work that out of my system. Now, off to make lunches, pull the trash, and get everyone ready for school…