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Monday, July 08, 2019

Grandpa's gone

We left the house at 8:38 to head to church this morning (we were aiming for 8:30, so we weren't terribly off schedule). The church building itself is about a ten-minute drive from our house and it looks quite a bit like our old Berini building in Durham, though it's not quite the same.

Walking from our parking stall to the church building, Grandpa joked, was like walking from our house to the church building in Utah. We will miss being so close to the church building but so far we are really enjoying our ward and are happy to be, as they say, "in the mission field" once again.

Zoë's favourite part of church was that they sang all the same songs she already knows (standardized curriculum will do that for you). Benjamin seemed to enjoy goofing off with the boys he was sitting with on the back row of the primary room (though I'm fairly certain they have put him with the wrong class) but he was annoyed that this primary was only now learning the song Gethsemane since our ward went ahead and learned it in January.

We told him that he's now ahead of the curve and can help his friends learn it.

Miriam happily proclaimed after church that she "made no friends."

"Surely you made at least one friend," I said.

"Nope. I met everyone in my class at the party on Thursday so I didn't make any new friends today!"

But she developed a deeper relationship with the friends she made on Thursday, I guess, and that's important as well.

Rachel would have preferred our first Sunday to be a Young Women's week, I think, but she bravely attended her Sunday School class.

In fact, I didn't even have to help her find her class because a woman in the row in front of us offered to escort her to the youth Sunday School (and Miriam, likewise, was carted off by a member of the primary presidency). It was easy to find where Benjamin and Zoë were supposed to be because the junior primary classes typically meet in the primary room before going to classes (while the senior primary attends their classes first and then meet in the primary room).

Alexander joyfully toddled into the nursery room to play with toys but then promptly had a little baby anxiety attack and started screaming his little lungs out. Andrew tried to wait it out but Alexander was unconsolable—shaking and crying and begging for Momma (and then, when that was getting him nowhere, for Grandpa)—so he went in to rescue the poor boy. Alexander wasn't particularly pleased that Daddy had been the one to come to his rescue, but he clung to Andrew's neck, anyway, and sniffled and whimpered and shook until he was sure he had come off as entirely too pathetic to send back to the nursery.

I'm not sure we'll ever get him to stay in nursery.


I'm also not sure what we'll do without Grandpa, who went home today (well, technically, he went on a business trip, not home, but either way he's not around anymore and it's weird and sad and will take some time to adjust to (some of us will have to do more adjusting than others)).

"What are we going to do without your grandpa?" I asked Alexander this afternoon, after telling him that Grandpa wasn't here anymore (because he'd been wandering around the house looking for him). "You're Grandpa's little buddy, aren't you?"

"Ampa buddy," Alexander agreed, thumping himself on the chest proudly.

I'm so, so sad to separate these two. I know Grandpa's looking forward to a rest (his arthritic thumbs need to recuperate from Alexander's constant pleadings to be picked up (and the rest of us are no piece of cake)) but...we're all going to miss him (Alexander, perhaps, the most).

Still, we're looking forward to being on our own again. In our own house (weird), with our own stuff (a little less weird), with just us (something that should be normal but is actually a little weird).

At dinner—we set up our dining room table and chairs, guys!—the kids were shuffling places around (again) and I said, "Same spots as last night!" to hopefully make them stop fighting (spoiler: it didn't work (nothing ever works)).

"But I want to sit on a bench by myself!" Benjamin whined.

"How?" I asked. "There are eight of...oh...seven. We're only seven now. Someone will have to sit on a side of the table by themselves."

So you see, we have some adjustments to make, but we'll find a new normal and it will be fine. 

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you are liking your new ward. How does that work? When you move in, you are assigned to a specific church nearby from someone in Mormon HQ and you must attend with those people? That's kind of cool, but not my own church experience where people sometimes attend several churches until they find one they like, or who teach their brand of doctrine.

    I'm sure you will miss Grandpa. I remember Alexander also dearly loved Grandma; they were good buddies.

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