Young mothers UNITE!

*Walks in, and sets soapbox down.*
*Steps onto soapbox*

Ladies, old and young, but especially old ladies. The really stern and stuffy ones who either haven't had small children since we switched to electric lights, or have never had any at all. The ones who still stubbornly hold to the antiquated "Children should be seen and not heard, especially at church " mantra. The ones who sit in the back of the room and go on tirades in the middle of the lesson.
Thats right, I am talking to YOU!
Maybe we, the young mothers of the ward, don't WANT to sequester ourselves to the back rows of the chapel overflow! Maybe we LIKE sitting in the middle of the chapel with our kids, even though they make noise and we have to take them out from time to time. Maybe we want to get some spiritual uplifting from our sacrament meeting WITHOUT having to try to hear the speakers from the very back row over our squirmy, squeaky kids!
 Didn't Jesus say "suffer the children to come to me"? In fact I bet that He said so because some cantankerous old person tried to keep the kids away from Him because she was afraid the kids would be too noisy or annoying to Jesus!
 Well guess what? I am going to make an effort to sit in the front of the chapel every sunday now! My kids will have the best opportunity to learn how to be productive and polite members of society because I am going to teach them that it is more important to learn how to listen reverently to the speaker each sunday from the front, and NOT hide in the back so they can make more noise!


Also, what does keeping the kids silent during sacrament meeting have to do with having more Christ centered meetings, you know, our  Relief Society lesson topic?
....Just sayin'.

*steps down from soapbox*
*Walks away, and sets soapbox down for 3 year old son to play choo choo train in*

Parenting 101 Lesson 25: Never underestimate the three year old.

  My son is really awesome. I have always known that. Today however, he reminded me just HOW awesome he can be.
  It was a lovely quiet afternoon, and I had just spent two hours yelling upstairs at Andy to 'lay down and go to sleep already' to which he cheerfully disobeyed. I finally relented ( I am pretty sure he has officially outgrown his afternoon nap. A fact that I am reluctant to accept.) and told him to go ahead and come downstairs so he won't wake Aubrey from HER nap. He asked if he could bring a toy downstairs and I said 'sure' since it was more likely that he would be quieter if he did.
   He brought down his tub of 'bristle blocks' and announced that he was going to build a "choo choo train" I smiled and said, "sounds good!"  and went on with what I was doing, fully prepared to congratulate him on whatever modern interpretation of a 'train' he fashioned.
 
                            My jaw about dropped to the floor when he presented me with THIS:

Not just a handsome little sucker, but a blossoming engineer!

I really couldn't get over his meticulous placement of the wheels and smokestack.

Finished Product, after some final tweaking from Andrew.

.....Never again will I underestimate my son....never.