Couch time

Our first attempt at couch time was Sunday evening. The first ten minutes went off without a hitch. We did have to tell Kate we were busy talking several times, but that’s pretty normal. We really do that pretty often, so it seemed that we really are doing this already. Then Kate went to the bathroom. Gabby, now without her playmate, was climbing up my leg. Then as I pried her off of me yet again, we here a plea from the bathroom, Kate needed help. These are things that regardless of how intentional we were had to be addressed, so we did. We got the girls settled back in to playing and finished our time.

Okay, so the first one was typical life with kids. We thought we had it pretty well down though. Right? Wrong.

So on Tuesday we sit down to have a little chat. Kate is mad at the world because she refused her nap. We spent most of our time “talking” straining to hear over the screaming. Not a little wailing now and then a full out scream. It was lovely. It lasted thirteen of the fifteen minutes. The baby was whining, after all her playmate wasn’t playing. I’m not even sure what we talked about.

The rest of the week was much less eventful, pleasant for us, but not much in the way of blog fodder. One time Kate played in her room the whole time, not something she does often, after all the only person she gets to talk to there is herself and she is quite the people person.

Note: not our couch--we don't even own a couch...it died when we moved. The poor thing got crushed. We do couch time in chairs. Sad?

Sunday School

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. – Acts 2:42 (NIV)

When I was growing up my parents were part of a great Sunday School class. Actually they still are. They’ve been members of this class for about 25 years. The people are wonderful, and after 25 years they have a strong bond. As kids we went to picnics, swimming parties, and (of course) potlucks. My parents served on a lot of committees, saw out some building and renovation projects, and my mom was the church secretary for several years too, so we grew up literally “in” the church. The classrooms were our play rooms, my sister and I memorized the Apostle’s Creed while standing in the pulpit (it was taped to it, so if anyone leading ever forgot it was right there), and we spent a lot of time playing in the evenings with the other members' children.

I have moved from town to town and church to church. I have never seen quite the bond that they have there. One thing that is quite different is that most churches don’t have the on-going classes. They offer a topic and who ever wishes to attend goes until that topic is complete and then everyone switches again. This offers more freedom in study choice, but doesn’t lend itself to the unity of the long term class.

The baby is finally old enough to stay in the nursery, so we decided to join a Sunday School class being offered by our church this past Sunday. It’s a study for families with children, so we’re hoping that this class will give us a link to some of the people in the church we’ve been attending since we moved here 16 months ago.

The first part of the class has focused on how to keep our homes from being child centered. It’s completely counter-intuitive and also the complete opposite of what seems to be screaming at us from every angle these days, but it’s true. We, as a married couple, need to show our children that there is a solid relationship between their parents ad that they aren’t the center of the universe. We think we do a decent job on this, but perhaps there are points we can refine.

Homework for lesson I:

We are to spend have four sessions of couch time. That’s 15 to 30 minutes that we sit and talk while the kids can’t interrupt. We already do this with much less intentionality when Justin gets home in the afternoons. We will be sure to do this, not over dinner preparations or from across the room, like we often do though. As the idea was explained, I immediately thought of Gabriella though. How do we explain this to a one year old. She’s just not going to get it. I understand the point—that we have time to talk and that the children see that we have a relationship aside from them. That will give them assurance too that their parents’ marriage is secure. It seemed questionable from a practical standpoint though. We’d give it a try.

We’ve had our first session and it was pretty funny, but I’ll write at the end of the week and see how it all turns out.