Must Be a Boy Thing

Burrhouse worries about yet another Monday following all too closely on the heels of a weekend, but more interesting to me was his description of church with the boys yesterday.



It's gotta be a boy thing.

[Via The Inner Dad]

Yeah, I could accept that. I think there are a couple of additional factors that play into it, too. One is that there are three of them, so there is always one left over. Thankfully, for the most part, Ben does a good job of taking care of himself and being well-behaved, but sometimes he has a bad day, and if he's in the foyer, all bets are off.

Joseph is a "grass is always greener" type; so, he's always happier if he's with the other parent. Josh we can usually count on to make things exciting, and I find myself out in the hall with him 2/3 of the time.

Thankfully, Josh is in nursery and Ben is primary, so most of the time we only have to deal with Joseph. But that's where the second factor comes in: our ward has sacrament meeting last, and that is the most torturous thing that can happen to a family with three small kids. They have nothing to look forward to; for them, all of the fun has passed, and sacrament meeting is 70 minutes of dreariness. By then, Joseph is tired, and they're all hungry, and to sit through a boring 70 minutes, is just beyond their little ability to handle. Don't even mention the chaos that ensues when we keep them after church for choir practice. I think that were sacrament meeting first, they'd be much more patient, they'd have greater incentive to be patient (since they'd have the reward of primary and nursery), and even were we to have a terrible time in sacrament meeting, we'd be able to hand them off to the various auxiliaries and enjoy the remaining meetings. But instead, we get to play "screaming child roulette." Oh, well.