Thursday, November 18, 2010

The girl in the flowers and the boy in the bear suit.

A momentous family celebration is fast approaching our tribe. We have a wedding in the family. As an additional honor, my wife and children have all been asked to serve in the wedding ceremony in some capacity. This is a wonderful time and we were thrilled to play any small part of this couple’s special day. However, the excitement for me quickly wore off. You see, we’ve been down this road before and it most closely resembled a three stooges comedy.


Allow me to rewind the tape a few years, when my son was only 18 months old. He was asked to serve in one of our closest friends wedding as the ring bearer. That time too, we were excited and honored that our son was asked to be a part of the special day, but we quickly learned that giving instructions to a one year old is a little like giving instructions to a cat. They may listen closely and do exactly as you ask. Then again, they may not (in fact, the latter is probably more likely).

The truth is, you don’t ask an 18 month old to serve in your wedding because of their reliability; you ask because they are cute and potentially entertaining. Well, our son was both. He started down the aisle and immediately got distracted by someone he knew in the audience and ambled in that direction. At some point, he realized that a huge crowd of people were staring at him from all sides – he was surrounded! He immediately looked for an escape route and found Daddy in the back and ran back to me. Mission aborted.

Well, now he has an opportunity to redeem himself. We didn’t get off to a good start when he recently saw what he was going to wear. Now the suit was beautiful, so when my wife asked him what was wrong, he said, “It doesn’t look like a bear.” Clearly we had not enunciated our words clearly and he had misunderstood the term ring bear-er for ‘ring bear’. Apparently, he thought he was going to be delivering the ring to the alter in a bear costume. Which, now that I consider it, would have been pretty cute AND entertaining, but may not have tied into the wedding theme very well.

My daughter, who is serving as the flower girl, unfortunately had an even worse response to her dress. When she first saw her dress, she had a serious grimace on her face and yelled, “I no want it!” If you’ve ever tried to make a 2 year old wear something they don’t want to wear, you understand our concern. We assume, like my son, she thought she would be able to wear or play in flowers (playing in the flowers is still a strong possibility). After several introductions to the dress, she finally gave it a hug one night before going to bed. We aren’t totally sure what that means, but we are hoping it’s a good sign.

What should make this event even more interesting is that my wife is also in the wedding. Why is this interesting? Well, that means Daddy has to direct, coordinate, adjust, motivate, and guide two young children. And if I have any parenting weaknesses, they are; directing, coordinating, adjusting, motivating, and guiding. So, this should be really interesting. If nothing else, it should be good for at least another blog, right?

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