Going to the Chapel

The kids went with us to their first ever wedding. The ceremony and the reception were at the same venue, so that was a blessing. It was an evening wedding and the children had already spent most of the day running around, being goofy and generally tiring themselves out. By the time we left the event I was exhausted from wrestling the baby, and my eyeballs were tuckered from roving around the hall trying to keep the toddler in my line of sight.


















About five minutes into the ceremony, and for the rest of the night, the baby decided she didn’t really want to sit still after all. Anything we tried to give her to keep her occupied just wasn’t good enough. Her brother, on the other hand, was content to play with the folded name cards that indicated the table we were seated at for an absurd amount of time. He lined them up, stacked them and unstacked them. He ran around the dance floor and flirted with the pretty photographer; he insisted that she dance with him, and she did, all the while attempting to take pictures of him running in circles with his green linen napkin tucked into his shirt like a cape. The baby spider-crawled to the music while intermittently rubbing her eyes and crying from sheer exhaustion.


















Other than watching my childhood friend get married, there were some other significant highlights. The baby let me eat about half of my meal while she sat semi-placidly on my lap. My son actually ate a good portion of his chicken fingers and fried potatoes; this surprised me because he has reached levels of fussiness when it comes to eating that have not been achieved previously by any other person and the chicken fingers were decidedly different from the chicken nuggets he’s used to and the potatoes were circular with a smiley face punched out of their middles. He also told us that he had to visit the bathroom no less than four times. This made me feel very proud; of myself of course for sticking with the whole potty training thing to the bitter end instead of giving up like I wanted to every day for about three months. Okay, okay- I was actually really proud of the little man for being such a big boy.

Overall, I would say that the evening was a success. My children not only provided entertainment for the people at our table, but also for most of the people in attendance. Nobody, including myself, threw themselves down on the floor in an all out tantrum; my son had a grand old time at the “party” and talked fondly of it the following day, and the baby was not stepped on as she tried to weave her way through and under the tables. No one screamed, “That’s mine!” or fought over red racecars or the pointy stegosaurus. Any evening that does not entail screaming or bleeding is a triumph in my opinion.