JUDAH (again!)

There are days when there is no question as to why my hair is so rapidly turning grey. I think all the kids have given me fair excuse there but Judah seems to enjoy it the most.

Let's see........ we started off by drawing an ENORMOUS smiling face on our stomach (teeth included!!) and then "sharing" said artistic expression with the older people sitting at the table next to us at the church potluck by pulling up his shirts (yes TWO shirts) and flashing them.

Then Sunday morning the children's department presented a song at the end of service. Our church is fairly small, particularly in the children's ministry. There are only maybe 10 kids total involved in the class from 3-7 years of age. ANYWAY........One of the ladies sang "On the Day that Jesus was Born" --- a really upbeat Gospel style number and each of the kids had a cardboard cut-out they were supposed to use at the appropriate time. Bekah comes out pretty as a picture, holding a huge cardboard trumpet. She pretended to play it, raised her hands and was dancing. Very cute. There is a huge happy face another little guy is holding, dancing feet with someone else, a sun that one kid rose and set each time the song said "on the day", etc.

Well......... my darling is chosen to be the Baby Jesus. I'm sure that he was chosen because his personality is a rule-follower. He is generally an "on-task" kind-of kid. Unfortunately, the teacher does not yet know him well enough to know that he also a huge ham and he had a captive audience.

He was set center-stage in a chair and was supposed to raise and lower this enormous cardboard picture of Jesus. The picture is as big as he is and very cute. The lady starts to sing, up goes the sun to represent the day and up goes Judah's Baby Jesus. All is going fairly well so far. He is amped but holding it together. The song continues, Bekah plays her trumpet, raises her hands and dances (the angels rejoiced line) and we are back to Judah again.

My son starts metamorphosing before my eyes and rapidly things start to decline.........

As Baby Jesus passes in front of Judah he starts pulling a move from the movie Madagascar . In the movie the lion raises his hand in front of his face and as his hand goes up and down he changes expressions. Judah easily adapted.

Baby Jesus went up and we see Judah's mischievous grin, as Baby Jesus descends the next face we see is a frown, up Baby Jesus goes and there is a Calvin & Hobbes enormous toothy smile, as Baby Jesus goes down we see a pout, Baby Jesus goes up and there is a mad face, Baby Jesus comes down and there is a tongue-stuck out open mouth - eyes rolled up expression fit to kill the farmer's mule.

I am sinking further and further in my seat, wishing somehow I could squelch the rapidly growing snickers knowing that it would further encourage my little performer. However, as the laughter grew so did the expressions -- by the end of the song the riotous laughter was almost as loud as the miked singer!!! To even more fully appreciate this you have to understand that almost every line has the words on the day that Jesus was born -- he had a plenty of opportunity to really see this flourish as he embellished his faces.

I think he added about 50 silver streaks by the time the three minute song had ended! At least it was memorable :)