Monkey see, monkey do

We were at church today, something that doesn't happen as regularly as we plan for the very reason of what happened this morning. We had on this occasion made an extra effort to go because Tweenie's junior choir was performing 2 songs during the service and she had a solo.

It started out with singing from the hymn books. Rascal made it through 1 1/2 verses and not a beat more. Shockingly, despite frantic shushing, bribing and pleading by this mama, he would not settle down. So, I took him out of the main sanctuary into the foyer.

He screamed even louder because now he was away from his beloved papa. Now, Rascal has the loudest voice I have ever heard. In fact, we never have used a baby monitor for him; it was never necessary. Unfortunately, this church is quite small so the deafening shrieks were only slightly dampened by the sanctuary doors. I hauled him down to the Sunday School rooms.

By the time we got down there, he was weepy and contrite.

"Are you going to be mama's good boy?"

"Yeth", he lisped pathetically.

"No more shouting?"

"No." The big blue eyes won me over, and I carried him back to papa.

Seconds later, he forgot his promise and I hightailed it out of there with him in tow back to the rear of the building.

"I good! I good!" he howled.

Once again, his sad little face won me over and I brought him back to papa.

Of course he acted up yet again. This time, during our backstage pep talk, he turned the tables.

"You, go! OK? No dat! Go carcar! OK? No good! OUT! GO!" He berated me with all the force in his 30-pound, 3-foot tall body. I made the fateful mistake of cracking up with laughter.

"No DAT! 'Top! What doing?! NO!"

He put his hands on my butt and pushed me into the Sunday School rooms. I managed to regain control just before he put me into Time Out in the corner.