One of the many joys of being a stay-at-home-dad/musician is that, when I have music related things to do in the daytime, I often have to bring Edward along. The most frequent example of this is my weekly worship planning meetings that happen every Monday as a part of my job as Minister of Music at my church. Edward comes to most of those meetings and, being three, is generally not interested in helping to plan worship services.
No, Edward is interested in playing with toys, so we set him up with some items from the nursery and he usually is able to keep himself somewhat occupied for the duration of the meetings. Although Edward, being Edward, is also interested in wild fits of naughtiness and rampant destruction. Some of his favorite activities include running up and down the halls shouting loudly, and touching everything on the pastor’s desk.
My friends and colleagues swear to me that they do not mind any of this, and so I have to believe them, but it is not always my idea of a productive time to be chasing Edward around the church as he growls at random people. He hasn’t totally destroyed the choir room yet, although I do think he is trying hard. Watching Edward is a little like living in a sitcom. You are going crazy, but everybody else thinks it is hilarious and cute.
Yesterday I had to go in to church again for a rehearsal of sorts, and while I was up in the sanctuary Edward decided to escape, slamming and locking the door behind him. Since I knew he couldn’t get back in without a key, and he is not that great at using keys yet anyway, I went after him. He wasn’t in any of the adjacent rooms, so I decided that he must have somehow run down the stairs at top speed. My suspicions were confirmed when I started downstairs and found this scene at the bottom:
Well, at least I had found his clothes.
I found him in the bathroom going potty, which was actually a good thing, although I feel like he might have waited until getting into the actual room before shedding his pants, but that may be nit-picky of me. I managed to get him dressed and back upstairs and happily playing with his toys again so I could continue my, you know, actual work that I was being paid to do.
The rehearsal went well up until the point that Edward somehow managed to turn on the organ and started playing it. This was not good. He does not even know how to play the organ, and he was using way too much pedal. The pastor told Edward not to play with the giant and expensive piece of equipment, and then felt bad about saying anything. Oh no, please do not feel bad about telling Edward not to mess with your huge and costly pipe organ. I know he is cute, but his naughtiness must be contained! I also do not wish to crush his sense of wonder and exploration, but we have to set a limit somewhere, and I feel that a good place to start would be to prohibit smashing on things that are worth more than my house.
We got out of there without further incident, although Edward did photobomb my photo shoot for my church website picture. Luckily everyone thought that was cute and hilarious too, so they are keeping it and using it anyway. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy hanging out with Edward, but I hope it is reasonable for me to say that my working life will be a lot easier once he starts pre-school in the fall.
Lol! Don’t count on it!!