Germs in the nursery... and other scary stories!

Ah... ah... ah... CHOO!

A toddler, somewhere between the age of 18 months and 3 years, has just released a giant spray of virus laden, oober-goobered snot all over me, herself and the table holding our illustrious snack items.

I reach for the kleenex to wipe her nose, then grab some hand sanitizer in an attempt to de-germ myself, while throwing away all the snacks that have just been duly contaminated.

Welcome to the church nursery.

There are rules about not sending children into the nursery with contagious diseases, but the fact is, it's hard to know for sure whether the kids are contagious, and I understand the desperation that young mothers feel in wanting just one or two hours in a week of adult time.

Ergo, contagion happens pretty much every week.

I used to be rather germ-o-phobic. I don't know anyone who especially enjoys getting sick, but I especially hated it... and went to great lengths to avoid those especially germ-fest traditions, like indiscriminately shaking hands with about 473 people... and then eating little pieces of white bread from a tray which has been passed through the hands of roughly 9,694 people... without ever being washed.

Lately, however, it just doesn't seem to matter so much. I've come to set my watch by that 48-72 hour time frame in which a virus merrily incubates in its host's system. It starts at 10:15 Sunday morning... and just like clockwork, generally hits by Tuesday afternoon... you know... the scratchy throat and that headache that starts at the nape of your neck and works it's way over the top of your head... into your eyeballs... up through your burning sinuses, around your entire body... eventually exiting back out through your bleary, red-streaked eyeballs, eventually settling in your earlobes.

Ugh...

Every Tuesday, I dutifully take 5,000 mg. of vitamin C and crawl into bed early, hoping to simply sleep it off.

Usually, it works.

This isn't my first time in the nursery, not by a long shot. In fact, I think I've had almost every calling a woman can hold in a regular ward... and some that you can't. For instance, I was the pianist in priesthood meeting one year. It was an act of mercy, really. Without a piano, the men sounded something like sacrificial bullocks being led to the slaughter. It was a frightening noise... one which inspired a primal urge to run for the exits... so, when they asked (begged) me to take just a few minutes to play for them, I happily agreed. Voila! A vast improvement! The whole ward, every class room within ear shot, was immensely grateful.

But, back to the nursery.

I've spent my own fair share of time in the nursery, chasing down my own naked children, reapplying their diaper, shirt and shorts, and trying to figure out a way to make them understand that streaking through the Mormon church just wasn't, generally, an accepted practice... at least, not on the Sabbath.

I was the nursery leader when my own children were babies... a situation of supremely cruel and unusual punishment. To any future bishops out there, NEVER call young mothers to the nursery. It is just utterly sadistic!

Now that I'm a "Nana", however, and my children are grown, I usually enjoy it... pretty much. I mean, where else in the church can you disappear from general church existence - into an environment where you get to wiggle all you want, play with toys, take your shoes and socks off at will, and spend 2 hours dispensing (and merrily eating) snacks?

I am the "snack lady"... and we buy our own snacks!

These are YUMMY snacks! Fruit snacks and mini pop tarts (a tiny, delectable frosted cracker-like invention). There are gummy life savers... (can I just say "YUM!") as well as the more traditional cheesy "whales", Nilla wafers and "gold fish"... which is a pretty funny concept. Ask a toddler if he wants to eat "Goldfish" and he will immediately look at you as though you've lost your mind. Show him the cheesy crackers and he's your friend for life!

Most people ask to be reimbursed for the nursery snacks, but not us. This way we can feel free to eat all we want, right along with the kids, and not feel the least bit guilty for "embezzlement" of church "property".

Snacks are a glorious part of the nursery calling, a time of joy and bonding when we absolutely stuff ourselves with tasty treats. However, snacks aren't the only highlight. We also play with toys... lots and lots of toys. Occasionally, we delve into the sticky adventures of once multi-colored play-doh that has been mushed all together until it's a single color of generally nauseating purple-gray. The kids don't care. All they want is to make cookies out of it and insist that you, their teacher, "eats" it with the greatest show of thanksgiving.

Always, we pull out balloons of varying colors, which we then blow up and gleefully kick around the room. At first, we filled these up with helium and long festive ribbons, just for a little bit of extra fun... however, it sort of had a little too much feeling of Carnival Hour... even for someone like myself... so I, repentantly, left the helium home after the first month. The children really didn't seem to mind either way.

At 11:30, we clean up the toys and I reach into my "bag of tricks" to see if I have any special treats... which, of course, I always do. The kids gather around, trying to snag as many of the delectable morsels as possible. Sometimes, I count them out, placing them into their hands: "One, two, three, four, five!", and other times, I stuff them into their pockets... this slows them down... just a hair... long enough for me to make sure that everyone has gotten their fair share.

About 25 minutes before church ends, we start into "flying time". The diaper-laden toddlers all RUN to the table, climb up, and Kirk takes their hands, swinging them high in the air, around the room (trying not to conk any stray kids in the head) and finally lets them "come in for a landing" on the top of the slide, after which they rush to the floor, jump up, and RUN back to the "runway", hoping to take off again, as quickly as they can manage to wiggle and/or push their way in front of the next child. This requires a great deal of concentration to make sure that everyone gets a fair and equal share of turns, proving that, to be a nursery leader, you must possess at least a few live brain cells... contrary to common assumption.

"Flying" is a time of great excitement in the nursery! In fact, we frequently have to remind the children to get off the tables during snack "hour" because it just isn't time to go flying yet. This is also a rare ritual of "healthy worship", being that it's the only appreciable exercise that Kirk gets each week...

Finally, for the last 15 minutes, we spread a quilt on the floor and every one sits down (in theory, anyway) for singing time. The songs are awesome of course... you have the standards: "Itsy-bitsy spider" and "Popcorn", "Old McDonald", "Happy and you know it", and then you have my own personal favs.

"5 little monkeys jumping on the bed.
One fell off and broke his head!
Momma called the doctor and the doctor said:
'No more monkeys jumping on the bed'."

and...

"3 little monkeys swinging from a tree,
teasing mister crocodile: 'Can't catch me!'
Along comes mister crocodile, quiet as can be...
SNAPS that monkey out of that tree!"

The children love to follow along with the hand movements, clapping their hands, slapping their legs, stomping their feet or shouting hurray, with a fist bump to the sky. Good times!

Finally, noon rolls around and the parents come to gather their small fry to take them home... where they scratch their heads in wonder as to why, when the rest of the family is famished after church, their toddler isn't hungry at all. :o)

Kirk gathers up the fan, I gather up my "bag of tricks" and we head home as well. Once there, I set my proverbial alarm for 48-72 hours, knowing that's it's inevitable. I'm going to get sick. It happens every week. 4 times a month, sometimes 5, a new virus finds it's way into the Kearney nursery, excitedly waiting to meet it's newest host... me.

I'm not complaining, really... it's far better than having to sit perfectly still (something I've never been good at) and pretend that it's comfortable to act like a grown up for a bun-numbing 3 solid hours.

So... until next week, when we meet again... just pass me the vitamin C and a giant handful of those cheesy crackers... and I'll climb into bed with a smile on my face.

Burning the midnight oil...

Have you ever wondered where some of our sayings come from? Like, "Burning the midnight oil", for example. Everyone knows the obvious answer of staying up late into the night, but where did this saying come from, besides that boring answer of "from the days of oil lamps". Did they have a special oil that they saved up to be burned only at midnight? Say, for example, the stinky oil that wouldn't bother as many people when more of them were awake?

Burning the midnight oil... It's what I did last night, and today I was so tired that I could barely hold my head up in church, which wasn't a good thing. You see, the stake president was speaking, and as I jerked my head forward from it's backwards falling position, eyes suddenly wide open, I was met by the gaze of our stake president... who is new, I might add, and considerably younger than myself (ergo, not as tired...). He looked a bit unnerved that someone would be falling asleep during his illustrious talk. It WAS a good talk... I think... I just couldn't hold my head up any longer.

At that point, I vowed I would take a nap as soon as I got home. I didn't think I would make it to the end of the 3 hour block, but then came nursery and all the snacks kind of revived me. You've got to love working in the nursery. Where else in the church, do you get to skip to RS while eating snacks and playing with toys for 2 hours? But nursery is a whole other blog... this one is about burning the candle at both ends... or burning up in hot flashes... or... where was I?

Oh yeah, I was so tired this morning, I forgot to take my purse. I discovered this... while driving to church... without my license... when I couldn't find my sunglasses, or my reading glasses, my handkerchief, my chap stick, or any of the rest of my universe... which then required someone else to drive my car home for me.

I was so tired... I fantasized about the nap I was going to take all the way home. I even debated whether I should eat lunch or just go straight to bed. Lunch won out... and then I remembered that I needed to write to Barry before it got forgotten and my poor missionary son would be the only elder in Fresno not to get a Monday email from home. .. which, sadly, has happened before.

Well, the email got too long, requiring a snail mail for the too bulky part... which, of course, required several pictures to be printed out... which required downloads from the camera, transfers into Adobe, edits and then the excruciatingly long process of transferring them to a printable format with my broken computer... Needless to say, 5 hours later, as I was putting the stamp on the envelope, I realized that I had passed nap time completely. Not only that, it was dinner time, and the horses needed to be grained... and then the burrs needed to be picked out of their manes... and then, well, we just "needed" to play with them a little...

Finally, I vowed to go to bed EARLY! 8pm, at the very latest.

Enter Family Home Evening. Kam's birthday party is tomorrow and we had some serious preparations to make. We made up a "lesson", of sorts, and then set to work getting the house ready for the party as a fhe "activity". Lame. To make up for the lameness, we next decided to play a game... at 8:10pm.

Dang, now I was officially late for bed... even if I did win the game... around 9:40 pm... then I realized I still had 2 presents to wrap... enter 10pm ... and a shower to take... and 4 chapters of Ether to read... and blah, blah, blah.

So, burning the midnight oil... what is it truly all about? Why is it so hard to do a simple thing like get to bed on time? Tonight, at midnight... I will read Ether by the light of my oil lamp... and figure it all out!

Lemmings

It's a well known fact that Lemmings are little rodents which, when chased by a threatening predator, will follow each other to the point of jumping off a cliff. I know this not because of any great research I've done, but because a few decades back, there was a documentary about Lemmings in which they were filmed flinging themselves over a cliff, one after another. It was said that they were of such a pack mentality that they would follow each other over a cliff to their death... just to follow each other. In reality, they were all being chased by a "predator" camera crew driving them over the edge. Very sad.

However, for the sake of argument, what I don't like about the concept of "Lemmings" is the idea of going with the crowd. I've never liked going with the crowd... I wanted to be an individualist. I'm not really sure where this concept got started, but it's been going for a very long time. Let's see, I'm nearly 39... so, probably around 50 years ago... Don't worry about the math; I know it doesn't add up.

In my quest to avoid "Lemming-ness", I've done some wild things in my life. If the fashion trend was to wear to pants, then I wore dresses. If it was cool to have short hair, then I wore mine long. This past fall, I discovered that really long hair was becoming all the trend, so I cut my really loooonnnng hair off to something short and sassy. If it's very cool to drive a sleek, expensive car, I will show up in my beater farm truck, wearing overalls, no doubt. I'm not sure why, exactly, I feel a compelling need to be an individualist, but somewhere in the back of my mind, it all goes back to those Lemmings, following each other over the cliff.

Exactly for this reason, I've resisted starting a blog... "everyone is doing it". Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear my mother's voice saying: "Well, if everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you do it?" You know, it's one of those quotes that they teach you in "Mother School". And yet, in my mind, I see those Lemmings running for the cliff again. "Don't go! Turn around!" I want to cry out to them. "Don't follow each other over the cliff!"

And now... I've become one of "them". I have a blog. Not that anyone but me will read it but, alas, it's here.

I am a Lemming...

going over the edge...

of the cliff...

Typing...

typing...

typing...

allllll

theeee

wayyyy

down.

Kerplop.