Judecorp.

I was a little leery of taking the punk to church this morning. We have been trading off Sundays, alternating who goes to church and who stays home and punksits, because said punk had started going through a weird phase where she would only eat/sleep at home and thus would spend most of church screaming, which meant that one of us would miss the whole service walking her around outside. So it was easier if we just didn't bring her, but today was New Member Sunday and they like to introduce all of the new members to the congregation, so we figured we would chance it.

It actually could NOT have gone any better. Timing was right at home and she took her morning nap from 8 to 9, giving her enough time to get cleaned and dressed and car seated by 9:30 with no rushing, and also meaning she wasn't a trainwreck when we arrived. I've been working with her on spending more time in the Moby Wrap (because she previously HATED being worn and that was unacceptable to me), and I put her facing me in the Moby on the way to church and we rocked and bounced until the service was ready to start, and then when she got a little cranky, I turned her to face outward and she looked at Jen and other people for a while, just happy as a clam. When she started to fuss a little bit, I sat in the pew and started giving her a bottle, and we had to take a little break when we all had to go up to the front of the church for our introductions. She burped once with very minimal spit up and spent the rest of the time sucking her hand and making funny noises. Then we sat back down and finished the bottle.

She was content to stand on my lap and look around, and she did spit up twice but not terribly, and laughed and had a good time for a while. During one of the hymns, she got really into the singing and started cooing a lot, which was fun. Then she started to fuss again, so I went to the back of the church, put her back in the Moby and bounced. Didn't work, she was /tired/. So I stepped out of the church, walked through the building quickly with my pinkie in her mouth for about 5-7 minutes, she fell asleep in the Moby and I went back in. We had to stand at the back of the church at the end of the service with the reverend so that people could greet us (weird, it was like a wedding) and then there was a reception (with cake! yay cake!) and she slept through the WHOLE THING. I could shake people's hands, I had a cup of coffee, and I ate cake with TWO HANDS. She slept in there for probably 45-50 minutes, then woke up smiling and we left.

Seriously, it couldn't have gone any better at all. I'm so proud of my little punk!

(And of course everyone went on about how cute she is. Because umm, she IS.)

~//~

We're church members! How odd! I was a church member with my family when I was a kid, but now, umm, *I* am the parent creating a church family for my kid. WEIRD.