How NOT to Exit the Church Gracefully

Yesterday after church we went to get the twins from the nursery as usual. They always love being there, but of course they love seeing Mommy and Daddy come back too.

The only problem is, there is a little playground right outside the nursery door. (The door opens directly to the outside; as with many buildings in Hawaii there are no hallways in the church, only open-air covered walkways.) There is no way to leave the nursery without passing this playground, and the twins always bolt for it as soon as they see it. Once they’re on the playground it’s difficult to get them off.

Therefore most Sunday mornings end with us dragging two kicking, screaming little balls of outrage to the parking lot. This is particularly difficult when my husband has to work on Sundays, which has been often recently, and ET, our 13-year-old, has to help. (She can carry a screaming toddler, but she’d not particularly gentle about it, if you get my meaning.)

So yesterday as we arrived at the nursery door, I tried blocking Baby Boy’s view of the playground with my body. It didn’t work. I’m not a small person, but apparently I’m not as fat as I thought. As soon as the safety gate opened he ran for the playground, with Baby Girl right after him. Fortunately, my husband was with us, so he and the older girls were behind me. They ended up watching the twins on the playground while I went in to get our oversize diaper bag.

Then the nursery workers and I played a fun game called “Where’s the Sippy Cup?” We play it often at home; with two sippy cups to lose there’s always at least one you can’t locate. We looked everywhere but I finally ended up leaving with only one cup.

When I walked back outside the older girls were trying to corner Baby Boy. My husband was holding Baby Girl over his shoulder and she was hollering to be let down. She is a champion screamer by the way. Her daddy says she may have a future as a horror movie victim.

So my husband said to me… well, actually he yelled to me over the noise Baby Girl was making, “She needs to be changed. She has a poopy diaper.” I really didn’t think she could have pooped in the five minutes they’d been on the playground, and I knew the nursery ladies would have changed her if she’d pooped before that, but I took his word for it. So I took her, and he scooped up a passing Baby Boy, saying he’d meet us at the car.

I went back into the nursery to change Baby Girls’ diaper, but when I got her diaper off I saw that she hadn’t pooped. I dressed her again and carried her to the car. Actually, I tried to get her to walk to the car, but as we passed the playground again, she dropped my hand and did the Jell-o trick --collapsing in a heap as if her legs had no bones-- forcing me to carry her struggling body in one arm with the diaper bag, my purse, and my Bible on the other arm.

When I got to the car, I informed my husband that there had not in fact been any poop. He turned to ET and said, “I told you it was a leaf!” Apparently, she was the one who’d said there was a poopy diaper. (If I'd known that we could have saved a lot of time. I never beleive the girls anymore when they accuse the twins of being stinky. I think they just find the babies' natural smell offensive.)

ET defended herself with, “She did have poop! I saw it! She must have sucked it back in or something to trick me!” I said, “So you actually think your baby sister pooped her diaper and then sucked the poop back into her body just to make YOU look bad?” I mean, we all know teenagers think the world revolves around them but this is too much!

Anyways, at least we all made it to the car, except for poor Lost Sippy Cup.

We may never see him again…