Last week Sunday mass went very well. The kids were slightly less squirrelly than usual and I actually heard the homily.
I should have known that couldn’t last.
This week was an adventure.
It began as we started to get out of the car in the parking lot. It was a cold, rainy Sunday and none of my kids brought coats.
So we got inside, only a little damp, and got seated. Mass began and Molly decided it was time to fill her diaper. Loudly. So I made my first trip back to the bathroom, luggage in tow, and changed the baby who had miraculously not soiled her beautiful outfit. (Yet.) Back up the aisle, seated again, I fought with Lily who was in rare form (in a bad way) and was making me wonder exactly how to discipline her in a very quiet way in mass. I seemed to alternate telling her to GET DOWN (from climbing the pew in front of us) with GET UP HERE (as she tried to slink away under the pew to get behind us) throughout the whole mass.
Then at one point she decided mass was over and just LEFT and started to walk out. I chased her down and brought her back.
Soon after, during the consecration, Tessa turned to Lily and said, “That is Jesus’s blood.” Lily said, “JESUS’S BUTT? That’s not Jesus’s butt! It’s Jesus’s BLOOD!”
While all of this was going on Molly was nursing on and off and crabbing about life in general and sucking her fingers. Which is all par for the course UNTIL she gagged herself with her two fingers and threw up all over me. And I mean ALL over. There were puddles on the pew and on the floor and – and this is the grossest part – in my bra, and it just kept coming. I was soaked. SOAKED, I tell you. Thankfully I had two blankets with me, one cotton afghan and one receiving blanket. So I wiped up everything I could with the afghan and covered myself up with the receiving blanket and back we went to the bathroom. Just for reference, we sit in the front, the bathroom is in the back. So I make my way, luggage, baby, puke, and all, back to the bathroom.
I changed Molly and wiped myself off as well as I could and got back to mass, which was thankfully only a moment or two from being over. I zipped up my jacket over my wet shirt, because we were not going home, we had a breakfast over in the hall to attend, and I was not going to miss it just because I smelled like sour milk.
And breakfast was lovely anyway.