Adventures with Little P: First Day of Lent

Things that are difficult to do with an almost three year old during the first week of Lent:

1. Forgiveness Vesper’s: In our community we have Orthros, Liturgy, and then Forgiveness Vesper’s on Sunday morning. So, after having been at church for about 2 ½ hours, we began the vesper’s service. The little one’s were cranky because they had been in church for so long! Little P just wanted to know when he was going to get his “bread” and then his snack! And then, I think Pavlos (or Little P as I like to call him) was a bit overwhelmed with all the attention from people. People wanted to hug and/or kiss him. And he decided that he wanted to be held almost the whole time (thank goodness he was willing to be passed back and forth between mommy and papa). Little P is a smaller child, he weighs about 25 pounds, but I found out that my arm goes a little numb holding him in my left arm while trying to do half-prostrations and making the sign of the cross with my right arm. Finally, when we had “circled” through most of the people and we were in a stationary spot, he would let us put him down.

2. No TV: We have a TV, but we keep the antenna hidden in another room (for things such as the Super Bowl, presidential debates, the Olympics… you get the picture). So Little P watches videos. And I am pretty picky about the videos that I let him watch (and, I just noticed, that I have only bought him one video the rest were gifts from grandma and yiayia). We have mainly Baby Einstein movies. They are 30 minutes long (which is enough time for me to take my shower in the morning and get ready). We are trying to not watch any TV. I put all the movies away. He asked for them all day yesterday, but he didn’t become too upset that I would not let him watch a movie. I did keep out the video of Grandma’s Visit to Our Home and Thanksgiving and Christmas 2004 (we have a digital video camera and Paul will take lots of footage at family events, download it all on to the computer, cut scenes, add pictures and music, and make a 30 minute video of that particular event). I don’t mind if Little P watches these movies (at lest, I don’t mind as much as the others) because they are movies of people that he loves (grandma, yiayia, pappous, his cousins Pavel and Maria, etc.). But we made it through Kathera Devtera (Clean Monday) without a movie!

3. Great Compline and Canon of St. Andrew: Little P was ok at church. I think it was difficult for him because papa came directly from work and so Little P was very excited to see him which is beautiful, but can be a bit disruptive. In our community, we push all the chairs to the outside edge of the church so everyone has plenty of room for prostrations. I think he did alright considering there was all that open space. It gave him room to cense (he uses a 100 knot prayer rope as a censer). He sort of got into the prostrations, although he would decide to prostrate either right in front of me or right in front of Paul.

Not a bad first day of Lent. And we are supposed to be struggling (all the time) and so having an almost three year old brings struggle to a whole different level. I do remember, before little p, being able to concentrate on the services. Now I know why children are a means for our salvation:)