Frustration and Excitement

What is it about that one church? It seems like every time we decide to try this one church, something happens to prevent us from going. The last time was one of the first outings for Patrick after the doctor allowed him to start going places, and we woke up to a deluge. We chose not to take him out in a downpour for one of his first outings. Today when my alarm went off, I absolutely could not get up. Not only was I exhausted, but I was also feeling lousy. I barely managed to pull myself out of bed when Patrick called for food about an hour later. Of course I'm mostly better now, just like the rain stopped the last time when church would have been partly over. It's frustrating because I was looking forward to going. It was such a beautiful morning too, sunshiny and just barely cool, like early spring. Instead I just slept through the gorgeous morning. I wonder if this is God's subtle way of hinting this isn't the church for us. I'd like to at least try it and find out for sure if that is the case, but the more this keeps happening, the less inclined I'm going to be to try it anymore.

The excitement of the weekend started on Friday night during our trip to Wal-Mart. The trip itself wasn't exactly fun--I HATE Wal-Mart--but one of our purchases was exciting. We got Patrick a high chair while we were there. I'm still not sure if he's ready for solids, but either way he'll need a high chair before long. We've started getting him acclimated to the chair. Today Matt and I ate lunch at our kitchen table (that's a first for us) and let Patrick sit in his high chair with us. He watched every bite we took and drooled the whole time. He's definitely showing interest in solid food. I don't think he hates his high chair either (despite what the picture shows); he likes being a big boy and sitting at the table to eat like his mommy and daddy.



Then frustration set in again shortly after we ate. Patrick suddenly noticed his budding teeth were hurting again, and he started screaming. Nothing I could do would calm him; the only thing that helped was having Daddy walk him around. Eventually Daddy got tired, so he was handed back over to me to scream again. He apparently got mad at me for letting him hurt. He reached his hand under the back of my arm and grabbed hard with his fingernails that I really should have cut in the last couple of days. It felt like having a cat's claw stuck in my skin, only there were five claws in me. I felt bad for screaming the way I did, but the surprise and shock caught me off guard. I'm also quite sure the clawing was deliberate. He never grabs with his fingernails like that. I don't know...maybe I'm reading that into it because I'm frustrated, but I still get the feeling that he knew exactly what he was doing. Fortunately the Tylenol kicked in a few minutes later, and now he is sleeping comfortably in his room. Why can't he just trust that I'm trying to make him feel better, not worse?