Sunday 12 December 2010

Y3 - 73/365: Out of the Mouths of Babes


It's not only funny how babies are more interested in non-toys, but also how they find enjoyment in toys in ways you didn't perhaps think of. Who knew the WHEELS of all things could hold so much fun and laughter?!

I finally visited a Catholic church in Cradley Heath/Halesowen this morning called Our Lady of Lourdes. I've been wanting to go for some time now, but it's probably just far enough in fair weather to require a car, which means waking Matt up to take me. Thankfully mass is at a more reasonable time of 11 o'clock, so it's not too bad. The parish priest is Father Anthony Pham (Pham-Tri-Van, according to the Archdiocese of Birmingham website).

I'm not certain which Asian origin Father Pham is, possibly Chinese, but I sure am glad that Catholic masses are fairly universal outside of a few minor differences. I could barely understand what he was saying, which made me feel awful because I don't want to feel like I was being judgmental or ethnocentric. It really was a matter of simply having a difficulty understanding his English. To be fair, you could tell some others were struggling when it took him five minutes after communion to explain the announcement of when the Christmas masses would be held -- so much that a fellow parishioner spoke up to clarify for the rest of us.

Ryan spent his time throughout the mass snuggled up in the Moby. He's had a cough since Friday and between that and the fact that it was close to his nap time, I wanted to give him the chance to sleep if he wanted, and being in the Moby is the most encouraging way to do that. He was pretty mellow and yawned a few times, so I fully expected him to nod off. What I didn't expect was in the silence after the Homily for him to clearly shout "DA-DA" for everyone to hear. It got a few giggles and I think Matt was secretly chuffed when I told him about it later.

The rest of the day was par for course for us for a Sunday. We went home for Ryan to have his nap until about 2-ish, then off to Em & Daz's for a lovely Sunday dinner. We returned home just before 7 o'clock for Ryan to have a top up of porridge before his bath and then off to bed by 8pm. Unfortunately the predictability of the day went out the window by this time as it took until 10pm to properly get Ryan down.

I guess working against a runny nose, cough AND four about-to-sprout toothy-pegs is a sure-fire recipe for no sleep. I just hope it sorts itself out by this next weekend for his party.

2 comments:

Fr Peter Weatherby said...

Vietnamese, I think you'll find. There is a significant Vietnamese population in the Birmingham Archdiocese.

Meg said...

Could very well be, thanks for that. Obviously not always easy to tell by one's physical appearance.