Toddlers Won't Perform

I had a really neat post to share.  One from Scripture. About Jesus.  Very edifying.  But you see I can’t post it now because my mind is somewhere else…on my son.  I’m shaking my head because the truth is that toddlers won’t perform. 

Today Jeff and I had an awesome experience. We had a welcome lunch party with the new staff of the church where Jeff will be Associate Pastor (yes, that’s the job!) starting Monday.  We were SO blessed by the staff–all taking a few hours out of their day to greet us and share their lives with us.  The Operations Director hosted us at her wonderful home, where we were lavished with amazing food and treats.  Everyone was SO kind.  Jeff and I just had to shake our heads at how we felt like we just instantly fit in with the family. It was like we already knew them, even though we didn’t. Not one person was stand-offish or cool. No one seemed suspicious, the way we’d sometimes felt in other situations.  We were just embraced with both arms, so to speak. 

But oh that little boy of ours!  You know I should have just had my parents come watch him. Of course that makes sense now looking back. But I wanted everyone to meet him, so we took him along. It’s so funny because sometimes Dutch goes to events like that and is an a-n-g-e-l, reading quietly or playing with trucks.  Well perhaps he caught some of the vibe from his mommy that morning, because unbeknownst to us Dutch had shut off the hot water in the garage. 🙂 Yeah, so when it was time for mommy to go shower and wash her super greasy hair…it was freezing cold.  Of course he didn’t know what he was doing, but maybe the agitation wore off on him. At any rate, he was pretty much an absolute wild man the entire time we were there. He even threw his truck right at Jeff once and hit him right between the eyes. Yeah…I wanted to die.

But what it showed me is that kids don’t perform. I admit, I wanted him to behave because we were meeting all these new people and didn’t want him to come off as a monster.  Well, kids have an uncanny ability to pick up things like that.  “Oh, this is important to you?  Ok, let me push as many buttons as I can!” 🙂

Thank goodness that I now know we’re joining a staff of very gracious folks. They got on the floor and played trucks with him, had special Leggo fruit snacks for him to eat, and even let him play with the inflated pumpkins in the front yard.  In fact no one probably even noticed that he was a terror.  I just need to get over it.

Anyway, I guess I’m glad that our new friends on staff got to see that we don’t have it all together. 🙂  Overall I’m thrilled to join this new team, this new family, and I’m sure we’ll share many imperfect moments together down the road. That’s what family is for.  Right now I’m just thankful it’s naptime, and I’m making a mental note to call my parents next time we have an event to attend… 🙂