The Mass-adventures of the Anderson Toddlers (March 27, 2005)

The Anderson toddlers were relatively well-behaved for Easter Sunday Mass - the key word being "relatively". Although still disruptive, they weren't so bad that we had to remove them from the church, as we did on Palm Sunday when the boys were so bad that they were only able to attend about 10 minutes of the Mass.

One thing that helped us keep our 3-year-old somewhat in line during Easter Mass was the threat of keeping him from participating in the Easter egg hunt that our parish had for the kiddies following Mass. This threatened loss of even more candy to add to his Easter "stash" was enough to calm him down any time he got loud enough to be a disturbance.

Don't even ask me what makes our 1-year-old tick from week-to-week. Last week, he kicked and screamed and cried the whole time he was in the church. This week, he squiggled and squirmed and squealed - but only periodically - and he didn't scream or cry at all.

All of this meant that we were able to stay in the pew the entire Mass for Easter Sunday, which is quite a blessing for our family.

Happy Easter!