why i suffer through mass with kids

It’s another hot humid muggy soily (as in, my children will soil their clothing) Sunday morning. I am up early with the tot, then play pass off to my marathon-training husband who ran 26 miles this morning (!?!?! because he’s amazing), and doze a little. I dream of the perfect donut and sleeping forever. Did you know you could dream about sleep? You can. I haul my jiggly sore belly out of bed and semi-get ready for church. Throw on a dress and hoop earrings. Kinda brush my teeth and hair. As I pick up a hustle down the backstairs to the tunes of it’s mine and why does she always get it cascading as plaintive cries to the heavens, I think what if we didn’t have to get to church? We swap parenting again. This time for him to shower and put his legs up and for me to soothe the irrationally irate tot who wants blue mac & cheese for breakfast and insists on using a sharp kitchen scissors to trim the bushes in the driveway. They don’t need a cut. We all settle into reading about Little Bear and I sorta start a chai tea, iced. Like usual, I forget about it until the ice has watered it so down, no one would count it as mildly caffeinated anymore. We struggle the kids into their church clothes, we struggle them into their car seats, and I’m already ready to call it a day. It’s 9:56am. Mass is the center point of…