18 Months=Nursery!!!!

Tyler turned 18 mo. yesterday which in the LDS world means no more having to drag your child to all three church meetings on Sun.; where you are constantly running after them, picking up cheerios-and other unknown items which you can only hope are the remains of some sort of smashed up food left in the bottom of the diaper bag-from off the floor, enticing them with "quiet books" that are not at all enticing, pulling their finger out of their nose before anybody else sees and thinks they picked that habit up at home (which may or may not be true), and telling them "shhh" so many times that the people sitting in front of you begin to feel spit on the back of their necks-only happened once. Although in some situations having a child can be quite the entertainment during church, especially handy during certain Sunday school lessons-and every priesthood lesson for Bobby, by the end of Sacrament meeting we are ready to hand him off and have looked forward to this day for months!

It's just not fair to make those little ones try to sit still and be quiet for 3 hours straight, their bodies are just not made that way and this past month has been torcher for all 3 of us! Although the people in our church are NOT perfect, I love how perfect the church itself is. Every program: Nursery, primary, young men/women's, Relief Society/Priesthood, Home/Visit teaching, ect., is perfectly set up in such a way that every person in that age group is receiving the help and direction they need appropriate for their age. Everything runs so smoothly and efficiently it would be impossible for me to believe that these programs were not an important part of the Lord's plan for His people on the earth, and I am so grateful to inspired leaders whom have set the church up this way.

I was a little worried about how Tyler would do with nursery because he is still a pretty shy little kid and when he gets into a situation where there's lots of people he doesn't know he sticks pretty close to me. Bobby and I both wanted to be there to drop him off so we somewhat nervously walked down the hall telling him how fun nursery was going to be. We set him down right outside the door and when we opened it he stood there for a moment, kind of surveying the situation, and then took right off for the toys. We were a little late getting there so all the kids were already playing and he just walked right up to a group of kids playing with a rocking horse and jumped right in the middle of their circle. He didn't look back at us once, it was so funny! After Sunday school we went to check on him (they have a window at the top of the door) and he was busy playing away. The nursery leader saw us and came out to tell us that he had been doing great and loved playing with the blocks. No surprise there, he does that all day at home too! After church was over and we went to pick him up, the nursery leader said he was better behaved than all of the kids in the nursery that had been there for months, what a relief! He didn't even see us walk in so we called his name and he turned to look at us, gave us a half smile and a wave and went right back to playing with his toy. Totally did not care that we were there! We were laughing so hard! He put up a bit of a fuss when it was time to leave and we took him out of the nursery, but hey I'd rather that than him cry when he goes into nursery!

I was worried I might be really sad when I dropped him off at nursery for the first time, but after sacrament mtg. I was SO ready to let him run free under someone else's care! And the fact that he loves nursery helps me feel better about leaving him. So that's it. My baby is no longer a baby. I find myself just trying to soak up every moment I have with him so this next stage doesn't fly past as fast as his baby stage did. Unfortunately I have feeling it's just going to go faster.

After we got home from church he let me take his picture. You can see the sticker and the sucker he got at nursery, he was very proud of both and kept saying, "icker, icker".


I wanted a picture of him standing in front of something so that I can start to track his growth. Most people do this from the beginning by using a stuffed animal or something that they can compare their child to every mo. or 2 mo., but I'm lazy so I'm just starting now! It's fun to see how much they grow in a picture because you don't always notice when you're with them every day!