Living Victoriously (or A Sunday Without A Nuk)

Remember the ebay commercials a few years ago?  The ones that encouraged you to "shop victoriously"?  Well, thanks very much to Katie, I feel like we "church-ed victoriously" today.  There are definitely Sundays when we church...mundanely--maybe even occasionally defeatedly--in terms of wiggly little bodies, so I figure we might as well celebrate the victories when we can get them.  And so begins what will probably be the incredibly uninteresting story of (dun dun dunnnnnn) A Sunday Without A Nuk...

We have generally worked on getting the girls off of their pacifiers ("nuks") between 12 and 18 months (being done with it by nursery-age at church has kind of been the final deadline.)  Katie, meanwhile, is a mere 11 months old and madly in love with her little plug.  She fingers it, pops it in her mouth, mulls over it seriously, yanks it out, waves it in the air, sucks on it desperately, spits it out, holds it up to her eye for a close examination, licks it, droopily sucks on it as she drifts in and out of sleep, etc. etc. etc.  It is her accessory of choice as well as our silence (and sanity) preserver at church. 

And then today came along.  This is just Week 2 of Bryan really being busy in the ward bishopric.  With Bryan up and out of the house early for bishopric meeting today it was a little bit of a scramble getting everyone ready and out the door in time for Ward Council and THAT is when it happened: I somehow dropped the pacifier in the middle of the kitchen floor on our way out the door.


Now, forgetting a nuk at church would be cause for panic on a normal day.  But this was no normal day: this was a marathon church day.  And Katie did great.  She played happily under the table between me and Bryan at Ward Council.  She held it together all through sacrament meeting even though it was only our second time doing the whole no-Bryan-on-the-bench thing and the visiting high councilor ran long.  (There may have been several bottles and graham crackers involved in that little victory as well.)  Our music leader in Primary had a rough morning and didn't make it until senior Primary, but Katie provided ample entertainment for the kids by sitting on my hip and waving her arms through an impromptu music time.  Katie was even considerate enough to save her nasty blown-out diaper for when someone else (a very nice someone else) was holding her while I did sharing time (thanks Darice...sorry about the clothes... )  And then she cheerfully nibbled on a roll sitting on Daddy's lap through the whole Ward Primary Leadership Training Meeting after church.

And now after six hours of church sans nuk, I think it's time for the reunion of the year.  Hopefully being back with the best little piece of plastic on the planet will result in something else wonderful: being able to say tomorrow that we "slept victoriously."

"Reunited and it feels so good..."