Oh crap!

You ever have one of those moments where you wish the floor would just open right up and swallow you whole that very minute? If you've ever read this blog before you know that I have them all the time. I don't know how this happened to me, I used to be organized, clean and put together. Things rarely happened that I did not plan for and I seldom got embarrassed about the things people did around me. All that changed after I had kids. I'm sure my moments of humiliation are just beginning, after all my Peanut is only 3 years old and just learning to express himself in all his many creative ways. Yesterday was my brother's homecoming at church. It was a big event. All my siblings, their spouses, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors were there. We were jammed into my parent’s chapel with all the other regular attendees of that ward. It was packed. People had to sit nearly back to the stage. Thanks to our early arrival we had great seats, it took two entire rows to fit just my immediate family. We were seated about half way back in the chapel. The meeting was nice. Danny did a excellent job and did his best to ignore little Cam who saw him up there on the stand and yelled "yan-nee" through most of his talk. All was going great until Peanut reached his Sunday meeting reverence limit. Suddenly, he yelled out "oh crap" right there on the fifth pew from the front. Don't ask me why, maybe he was upset about sharing grandma with his cousins or maybe he was bugged about dropping his fruit snacks, I'm not really sure, all I know is I have to shut him up as soon as possible. I glance up at the stand where there is a full row of distinguished looking suited men, I think someone from the stake presidency is visiting, just my luck. I don't think they heard, maybe we're safe. Just then, out it comes again "oh crap!" I clamp my hand over his mouth as fast as I can, and quickly scan for witnesses. The one that works definitely caught it that time and so did my sister and her husband. I think at that point Peanut realized what a stir he was creating and started screaming, "oh crap" at the top of his lungs. Now my hand was clamped over his mouth so mostly it came out as muffled screaming but the damage was done and we were starting to attract attention. I begin threatening/bargaining with him, whispering in his ear as fast as I can. I begin with threats, "you'd better be quite or those men up there are going to be mad" no luck. "You'd better stop yelling or I'm going to spank you", still screaming. "If you stop yelling I'll let you go sit on grandma's lap" at that one he did stop screaming "oh crap" for a split second to consider his options, but in the end the "oh crap" resumed. I was getting desperate as the frantic peanut with my had clamped over his mouth was beginning to attract more attention. "I'll give you candy if you stop screaming"..... Silence. I'd found the magic word CANDY; I guess I'm one of those parents. I never wanted to be one of those parents who couldn’t control their children without the backing of a candy store, but I was desperate. You know now thinking back on it, it could have been much worse. I'm just grateful I don't use any other four-letter words, just think of the kind of things he could have screamed. Anyway, just to be safe, I think "oh crap" will be leaving my vocabulary and I'm going to try to remember that raising children means anything the one that works and I happen to say in the privacy of our own home might one day be screamed out in the middle of sacrament meeting.... Oh my gosh, I want to die just thinking about it.