Our Weekend “Retreat”

We spent the weekend on a retreat with a group from our church. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous weekend. And when you live in the city, there is nothing like a weekend in the mountains near the border of Pennsylvania and New York! While the retreat was slightly challenging for a family with two young toddlers, the kids did have a good time.

Taking toddlers to a new environment, however, requires a great deal of patience on the part of the parents. (Not to say that either of us actually have the required patience.)

For instance, while setting up our room on Friday night, I turned around to see my two children in the bathroom hovering over the toilet. As a mom, I have learned: that is never a good thing!

Mara was whimpering. Micah’s mouth was wide with excitement, as his eyes sparkled.

“Whh,” Mara stammered. “Whhhhhy he throw my shoe in the potty?!?!” She just stared, paralyzed, perplexed.

I ran into the bathroom lunging toward Micah (who, at that point, was reaching his little hand into the toilet) and saw bubbles rising from Mara’s now-submerged leather sandal.

That sandal has seen better days, I thought. Thank goodness summer is almost over.

And it’s a good thing we also brought “fancy shoes” on the retreat! Mara wore those the entire weekend.

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Sunday morning after breakfast, Mara was playing in the main room downstairs with a green toy water gun. A lot of people were milling around, enjoying casual conversation before our first session when one of the other boys about Mara’s age came up and took the gun right out of her hand and ran away.

Mara has not yet learned to handle this well. So she screamed. Loudly.

And as if she didn’t already have everyone’s attention at that point, she began desperately shouting, “I want to shoot some people!”

And when I say “shouting,” I mean the sound echoed through several valleys.

She didn’t say it just once. She kept repeating. Louder. More emphatically. “I want to SHOOT some people!!!!”

You can imagine how you might react at a church retreat, if you hadn’t seen what happened, and suddenly heard this toddler screaming, “I want to shoot some people!!!!”

(We are model parents, I promise.)

So if you’ve never met my daughter Mara, just imagine Fiona from “Burn Notice”–only she has red hair and she’s 2-1/2 and we don’t let her have any real ammunition.