Buying Time

I did not actually hear this said, but was amused enough by the retelling that felt it needed to be documented....

Loie, a member of our church, has become a sort of honorary grandma to our kids. She often watches them when I can't find daycare, or when Mary and I want to go out, especially over the months when Ardelle winters in Arizona. The kids enjoy being with her, and she with them. Loie is good for bringing over scrapbooking supplies for the kids to create cards and crafts with, and she is also as good as the grandmas at spoiling them with treats and trinkets.

So this past Sunday we invited Loie to sit with us in church, because we enjoy her company, the kids especially.

Normally I have Isaac in the nursery during the first part of church, which includes the readings and the sermon, and in turn gets kind of long and boring for the kids. I then go get them for the offering and communion, being more kid friendly because they actually get to move around (the kids get to run up front and drop coins loudly into a metal bucket during offering).

But this Sunday in which we invited Loie to sit with us I, without really thinking, elected to bring Isaac to church the entire time.

So we ended up finding ourselves looking for things for Isaac to do, to keep him quiet. It didn't take long for Mary to suggest to Isaac to color in the cover of the bulletin, which was a black and white drawing of Jesus and the disciples cooking fish around a campfire.

So Isaac contentedly colored in the drawing; which in his case means filling in every little empty space in the drawing with graphite of the stubby number two pencil found in the pew until the drawing is pretty much obliterated. Upon finishing his "coloring" in fairly short order he declared the his artwork done and also declared who would be the recipient of his latest work: "this is for you, Loie".

To which Mary, looking to buy more time, cleverly replied that it was nice of him to gift that to Loie and—handing him another bulletin—would he be so kind as to color a cover for her?

So Isaac spent the next minute or two filling in all the empty spaces of the cover with his number two pencil and, again, declared it done and gifted it to his mother as requested.

To which Mary replied again that this was great, and looking to buy more time handed him another bulletin and asked if he would now color one for Dad?

Isaac took the third bulletin in his hands, but then he leaned forward and looked past his mother and down the pew; and noticing that there was one other guy sitting in our pew at the end said: "OK... but I'm not coloring anything for him."