Palm Sunday

The ups and downs of parenting are sometimes great extremes.

This morning when I went into the girls' room to get them up for church, their room was so warm and pink and sunny. They both were still asleep, but with a few gentle words they were awake and smiley, fresh-faced and ready for a new day. I dressed them in pretty spring dresses (can we finally do that?!) and put bows in their hair. Gwen exclaimed about both her dress and Madelyn's, "Pitty, pitty", and hugged Madelyn. Madelyn was so pleased to be wearing her new pink patent leather Mary Janes ($8.83 at Walmart), and the three of us sang "Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna to the King of Kings" all the way to church.

After the service, which was a fabulously moving rendition of the passion of Christ, complete with explanation of atonement acted out by Scott and the boys choosing the perfect lamb to sacrifice for their sins, Gwen and Madelyn and I went to visit the real lambs and rabbits and chickens that had been used for the drama in the service. They were in a make-shift pen on the side of the church, enjoying the sunshine and occassionally bleating, to the delight of the children gathered around. Both girls were thrilled and Gwen was a little afraid, but not enough to keep her from reaching through the bars to touch the lambs' wooly coats.

The girls and I left the animals and headed out to grocery shop, as the guys had to stay to do their drama in the second service. Madelyn has been asking for months to get the special cart at the grocery store that you pay a dollar to use because it has a little TV screen inside what looks like a little car, with the basket portion for the groceries up on top. I was feeling generous today and knew we'd be in the store for a little while, so I said yes. Things went well for a while. Gwen periodically leaned her head out from under and called out to me to kiss her little puckered lips. But after about twenty minutes, and me still with shopping to do, things broke down. Gwen was tired of the little "Bob the Builder" video running on the mini screen in the car cart. She's not much of a screen time girl to begin with, and the quarters were cramped with 6 year old Madelyn sharing the space. I tried to encourage her, reminding her how fun it was, but she Wanted Out. She likes sitting in a regular cart where she faces me and we can see each other. This was Not That, and to top it off, this type of cart does not have that child seat facing the pusher of the cart, so there were No Other Options.

So we continued through the store with Gwen fussing louder and louder. I tried to hold her for a bit, but pushing the heavy car cart and holding a wiggley girl didn't mix well. So she went back in with much protest. Soon Madelyn called out to tell me Gwen had taken out her bow and hair band, and next thing we know, the bow is lost. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was the one bright pink clip-in bow we had, it matches lots of things, and now we don't have it. Sigh.

We made it to the check-out, choosing the aisle that was touted as having no waiting. We waited through a price check and some ID problem for the customers ahead of us, Gwen squirming and fussing and with very messy hair that was now unconstrained. She wanted a banana, she saw them on the belt waiting to be paid for, but did not understand why she couldn't have one yet. My explanations were in vain. We made it through the college age male cashier's comments about what Gwen did and didn't want, paid for our loot, and escaped to the outside, towing a full cart of groceries, including the biggest box of Huggies you can buy, containing 104 diapers, and 3 gallons of milk, on sale today only for $1.50 each.

When I reached the car, I realized I had not emptied the Large Amount of Stuff in the back of it that we had taken to Caleb's baseball game yesterday. That meant that a wagon and other paraphenalia were taking the space that my groceries should now occupy. So I got the girls in the car, handed to bananas to Madelyn to feed to Gwen to appease her, and pulled my cart around to the passenger side front door. I tried with varying amounts of success to stack things on the seat and the floor, and was chastised only once by the owner of the car next to me for having my door open too close to her car. In the middle of that effort, Scott called me on the cell phone to tell me that he and the boys were almost home. Thank you, thank you very much for letting me know. I'm just a little busy here, can't you see?

On the way home, after the banana was gone, Gwen said "Mom" in a loud voice about a hundred times. This begins to grate on my nerves after about the 20th time. Can you understand this? As I drove, I tried to gather my scattered thoughts, and remember the service and the depiction of Jesus' death for me. For me. For my sins. He loves me.

The ups and downs of parenting... not such a big deal, I guess.