We Are Having Home Church Today

So I ditched church today.  Dr. J is working a late night.  He won't be home until ten pm, which means the duty of taking the children to church would fall on me alone.  Usually I can deal with the challenge.  It is not fun.  Church with my children is a chore.  I have rambunctious talkative kids.  Sacrament meeting is an hour of torture for them.  As a result sacrament meeting is sort of torture for me.  Even when J is home and we split the kids it can still be a hassle.  Last week Cheetah actually ditched us and went and sat on the row behind us with a father and his son (wife had just had a new baby and she was home with their new baby and their now second child).  I tried to coax her, pull her, bribe her back to us but she would scream every time I made any attempts.  Finally I just left her.  But that still left me in charge of two children.  Captain E and Peach.  You think Captain E being the oldest he'd have gotten used to the drill but the kid has ADD, ADD bad enough that at school they labeled it on the spectrum.  There is some interesting research coming out now that says that some ADD/ADHD might just be a continuation on the autism spectrum.  You should check it out of if you are interested but since this is not a scientific journal this is just some random mom complaining about church alone with four kids let me just tell you what that means for me.  What ADD means for me at church is that my ten year old, the one I should be able to count on to be quiet and do his own thing needs a lot of my attention.  He gets extremely board and when he gets board trouble starts.  He will start picking at his sisters to try and get a reaction.  He will throw his body over the side of the bench, he will bury his head in his coat, start moaning really loud.  He will pinch people.  He will go through my bag to find gum and then try and toss it out on the floor.  He will fight with his sisters, loudly.  A lot of stuff I just have to let go, but things that are loud, messy, or harmful I try to reign him in.  Heaven forbid I have to take him out.  The kid will plant his feet and make me drag him.  It is embarrassing and stressful and horrible.  Because of this I often have to have Captain E sitting right by me.  I will hold one of his hands and write letters on it because that stimulus usually keeps him from moving off task onto something else but it makes it hard when you have three other kids to be constantly having to care for your oldest.  I have actually walked out of church before packed my kids in the car and left.  I have sat only in the hallway.  I have bribed, pleaded, begged, and punished.  It is exhausting and truthfully I haven't heard a full sacrament in years.  There is a certain irony to the fact that no day makes me feel less loving toward my family, less Christlike than Sunday.  It's actually sad.  But that is a normal Sunday, a one hour Sacrament Meeting.  Today is Stake Conference.  Last night I said to J, how in the world am I going to do four kids alone and he said, "Don't, you don't have to."  And so that is how I ended up staying home from church today.  There is only so much one person can be expected to do.  For me on this day alone with my children, 2 hours in a darken cultural hall on the cold metal chairs is just too much to ask.