Gate, Gate

Ethan discovered his more rambunctious side during his 3rd year. After having a fairly quiet and self-contained child for those early years, we're now getting to deal with the more typical squirmy and frequently loud childhood behavior.

As I'm sure is true with most children, this seems to manifest most frequently in quiet and very inappropriate settings. Probably because we don't notice it as much in noisy environments. 

Our latest adventures in embarrassing Mom came in the middle of church on Sunday. Ethan has been going home with John after Sunday school, in part because of this squirminess. But this Sunday he decided he wanted to come with me to church. So after Sunday school, we settled ourselves into the back pew -- because Ethan wanted to sit near the orchids on the table behind us. 

The service started out well enough. Ethan ate his snack and looked through his book, then spent a little time on my lap. But midway through the sermon, he clearly was losing his ability to sit still. 

Now Ethan and I are both recovering from ear infections, so we're both having a hard time hearing, and telling how loud we're talking. But apparently he was paying attention to the sermon. Craig had been preaching about the text calling Jesus "the gate." Suddenly, I hear Ethan -- in his best demon-possessed movie voice -- saying "gaate … gaaate." 

Now I don't know how loud his voice really was, but it sounded quite booming to me. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or be mortified. 

Needless to say, Ethan has now filed the scary voice away as a good way to make Mom jump, and I'm sure it will be back to haunt me again.