Advent Services and How Hannah's Not Ready for Children

Just got back from our advent lunch service (we're doing this cool "Blues of Christmas" service lunch thingy during the noon lunch hour so business people in our church and the seniors and everyone can come. We've had a jazz pianist, a brass ensemble, the school kids --and pastor does a devo all the while you can eat your lunch... it's pretty nifty)

Today we were doing a Christmas Carol sing-a-long and along with that learned the history of some of our most popular songs. Two guitar players from our praise team were along to accompany.

Enter child--who will remain nameless to protect his identity--we'll just say his name is JA. JA is 5 years old and the son of one of the guitar players--he also goes to kindergarten here and has been known to make the Kindergarten teacher cry. Anyway, his dad asks if JA can sit by me during lunch and while we sing. I say sure, I mean how hard can it be?

Apparently, pretty hard. This child is busy! As soon as he sat down he attempted to light candles, himself, and the church on fire-not intentionally of course--he just wanted to light his individual candle. During the hour that followed was the most taxing hour of my life "no JA don't cut the table with your knife" "No you may not have a second bag of cheetos" "Please don't play the piano while they're playing guitar" "please stay out of the kitchen" "please don't light yourself on fire" etc and all the while the LWML ladies were giggling and laughing and teasing me about "not wanting children" (to which I replied "not yet").

I must say I was glad to return the child to his father (after he ran off with 4 more cans of coke).