Christmas

The only thing I've wanted for Christmas for 4 or 5 years in a row was to hear Tim sing "O Holy Night". And this year he got to!

But Elijah was fussing because he wanted to go up and be with Daddy, and Benji was seriously on one--as hyperactive as I've ever seen him, all over the stand, sticking his head into the piano, running, throwing fits....Out Of Control.  So half way through the first verse, it became imperative I take them both out (since this was all happening during sacrament meeting).

So I stood in the lobby sobbing while one sister took Elijah, another took Benji (who ran across the chapel one way, and then across the stage the other a minute later). He escaped from both of us, so she took the other kids and I had Benji, and then his teacher had him (Tim said it was like watching the Keystone Cops routine).

And I just cried and cried and missed it.

Even after the song, the bishop's talk, the end of the meeting, Benji was running off, caught, running off, caught. It got so that every time I passed someone in the ward (afterward, when they were all socializing), they would just point and say, "He went that way" so I managed to navigate the maze of humans along the path Benji squirmed and ran over and over. And then we were getting everyone else's coats on and someone came in and said, "He's out playing in the snow" and by the time we got out there, he was down the block to the corner, half-way home.

And by the time I got home, he was in the back yard playing on the swings, and Tim was exhausted, and I was a wreck.

Merry Christmas to us. Some day no doubt I'll laugh (no doubt the rest of the ward was laughing), but for now, I'm discovering that it's possible to be so disappointed that you feel it in your gut, and it makes me sick with sorrow.

Maybe next year....