Water and Fire: A Quiet Sunday

Sunday, the day of rest. Chrissy and I are making an honest effort to rest and do restful things on Sundays. In theory, that works really well, except for the fact that we have kids and will never experience true rest again.

Sorry. Let me start again:

Sundays are more restful than other days of the week. Today started off a little hectic, though. Our church is asking parents to help out in the nursery, since they're a little short on helpers. We signed up to help out today, and so instead of dropping Jesse and Janna off in the nursery, we joined them and found ourselves swimming amidst a wave of about fifteen (twenty? a thousand?) hyper two-year olds.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into! I'm used to working with high school students. My typical interaction with students consists of discussing moral dilemmas and political issues. After a few pathetic attempts at conversation, I turned to Chrissy and calmly asked, "WHAT DO I DO?" She looked at me with the knowing gaze of a long-time preschool teacher and said, "Play with them!"

What does that mean?? I asked myself. At home, playing with my kids means wrestling with them, tossing them into the air, and catching them at the last second. I had a feeling that wouldn't work so well with other people's kids. Hesitantly, I grabbed a nearby truck and made some truck noises. I saw the eyes of a nearby kid widen. So far so good. I took another truck and crashed it into my first truck. Wild laughter ensued, and all my problems were solved.

In the period that followed, I played with all my energy, crashing cars into each other, cooking pretend meals, dressing dolls, and preventing casualties on the slide. I poured everything I had until I was utterly exhausted. Weakly, I checked the time - somehow, in a strange trick of the space/time continuum, only twenty minutes had passed - we still had an hour left!!!

Somehow, we survived the next hour and headed home. I have to admit, even though it was the most exhausting experience I can imagine, it was a lot of fun.

WATER:

Here’s where the restful part begins: we were invited by our friends, the Wileys, to join them at their neighbours’ pool for a Sunday swim. It was great: not only did they introduce us to an excellent drink called watermelon lemonade (one can of frozen lemonade blended together with one half of a watermelon = so good!), but Jesse actually enjoyed swimming around in the water! I have photographic evidence of his enjoyment. He wasn’t quite ready to let go of us, but huge progress is being made.

Janna, on the other hand, was having a grumpy day. The only thing that could soothe her was watermelon. I’m starting to think that she may be a little more calculating than I first believed – she managed to get (and eat) four pieces of watermelon this way.

FIRE:

It became less restful again when we returned home. The lunch cooler stuck to my stove burner had been taunting me all day, and I felt that it was my duty as a man to fix the problem. Without buying a new burner.

Naturally, the solution was to stick the burner back on the stove, re-melt the plastic, remove the cooler, and burn off the extra material. This seemed very simple and straightforward to me, so we deactivated all the smoke alarms, turned on the fan in the oven hood, pulled out the baking soda to put out the inevitable fire, and got to work.

We forgot to tell Katie. She came upstairs to see a kitchen full of smoke, flames shooting from the stove, and me standing there glaring at the whole thing.

Was it a success? I think so! The cooler has a circular hole on its bottom, but the burner is usable once more... as least, it will be when we clean it off. My arm smells like plastic, but that’s a small price to pay for the redemption of my stove (and my pride).

Until next time!