Maaaaaaaaaaaaa

I'm going to start this post by explaining to those who don't know my son very well that he has a love hate relationship with anything that makes sudden movements or sounds. For example, ALL animals. They move, unexpectedly, and typically make sounds. From a distance, he loves them. Thinks they're hilarious. But when they get close and move, he gets ridiculously nervous and goes into a slight state of panic.

That being said, I'll continue. Palm Sunday is a day I look forward to. All the children wave their palm branches up to the front of the church, smile, wave frantically to their parents and go on their way to Tot Church. Now that dude has just started attending Tot Church, this was a day to look forward to. OUR kid would be up there waving his palm branch. Well, this ideal Palm Sunday vision was going quite smoothly. I did take away the giant palm branch before he went up front as he kept waving it the elderly couple's faces behind us, but he was sitting nicely up front, waving at us and smiling his oh so sweet little smile. And then they brought in the sheep. A real live, "MAAAAAAING" sheep. A sheep that wanted to climb on the children and "MAAAA" in their faces. At that point, it all went quite the opposite direction of up.

This was the first Sunday dude sat in front on the steps all by himself. We sat 2 rows behind where he could see us and find solace in our smiling faces. As Tim and I became aware that the sheep was joining the children up front, we hoped the pastor's wife in front of us wasn't hearing us muttering "Oh sh*#@" under our breaths. He did pretty well....for 2 minutes. He kept telling the sheep to "stay away sheep! Nice sheep! No more "maaaaing in my ear sheep!" Yes, everyone was laughing at our son's nervous response to the barn yard animal. And then the sheep came too close and "maaaaaed" too loudly and before I knew it, there was a screeching dude, running up the aisle to the comfort of my lap, all the while yelling at the sheep from our pew.

At that point, I decided I would walk him out to Tot Church to avoid a big(ger) scene. He told everyone he passed that the sheep said "maaaaa" in his ear and then had the entire left side of church chuckling. Yes, ha ha. Isn't he cute. Our friend Amanda, this week's Tot Church teacher, informed me that the sheep was going to visit their class room. At that point, I gave her dude's hand and wished her luck, saying prayers all the way back to my seat that he wouldn't kill the sheep or run out of Tot church, vowing never to return.

The good news is that he did just fine in the classroom (sitting right next to Miss Amanda) and only told me 32 times about the sheep after I picked him up. And a mere 5 people asked if he was the one who ran to us screaming about the sheep. Yes, yes. What I didn't tell them is that we were quite pleased with how it all played out. I think we both envisioned it going so much worse. Let's hope they avoid all barn yard animals or even giant bunnies next week or he'll never sit on those front steps, ever again.