Always something.

Being Sunday, today was church day.

Rather than go to our regular parish which we've never been thrilled with, we attended Mass at the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros. Parking was a breeze, surprisingly enough though we did have to pay the random guy who was standing there pretending to be a parting attendant. A parking attendant for the side of the road, to attend church. *sigh*
The Cathedral is so much nicer with the lights on and the fans blowing. We arrived with the steps overflowing with wedding attendees. Sunday weddings are not at all uncommon, but it does make for an interesting situation if you're planning on attending a regular Mass. Thankfully for us, the baptism going on was being held in a side chapel (though apparently with a megaphone instead of a microphone) and the wedding was either still gathering at the end of Mass or the people just like to hang out there for hours.
The church sure looked pretty though, all decked out.
So we sat way up front since the girls wanted to watch the wedding that didn't happen. Mass started off in English with a rendition of Joy to the World no one could sing with. I'm not sure the jeans clad teen had ever actually heard Joy to the World before, neither had her jeans clad teen electric piano accompanist. It started steady, then sped ahead, skipped over the short interludes, went even faster, remembered the interludethe singer didn't stay with the piano and the congregation couldn't figure out where the singer was. This is in the Cathedral at the 10 a.m. Mass celebrating the Baptism of Jesus? Wow.
The sung parts (aside from that song) were all in Tagalog. Not a problem, it's mostly in Tagalog at San Antonio too. The readings and all the other parts of the Mass were in English. Then came the homily. And it was all in Tagalog. Well, that would usually makes it really hard to follow along. But we got the gist of it. Since Taglish is the real "language" spoken here, we caught the important phrases. There were literally a dozen English words spoken and these were them:
American citizen
American Embassy
American passport
Catholic birth certificate
originial sin
baptism
Gee. Wonder what THAT whole homily was about, huh? Ian was highly annoyed.
After church, the wedding goers were still there and the baptism was packed so we headed back towards home. The kids asked to go bowling so off to Powerplant and we had a fun bowling set. I won! Yup. 169, not too shabby and lots of luck. Nicholas won among the kids with 99. All I can say is, thank goodness for bumpers *wink* Jonathon was having fun until he got a bit bored waiting for his turn and decided to play with the racks of balls not in play.
He dropped a 12 pound ball on his thumb.
It's bruised, it's swollen, he cried a lot and didn't want ice on it. He whimpered until he fell asleep on my lap at lunch. But after his nap, while it's still swollen, it didn't impede his activities, so I think he'll live. The nap did him -very- good too. He has been absolutely miserable since our trip and making our lives miserable in the process. He yells at people if he doesn't get his way and not just No, but loud screaming type yelling that can devolve to repeated shouts of Shut Up. And he's taken to hitting us! Obviously that is not going over well at all.
He's been sick, I know. He's sick so he's not eating as much as he should, making him even crankier. And he's not getting enough sleep. All that together and none of his behavior should be a surprise. But it's still unexpected. Jonathon has always been a handful. He's always been the smallest, not just the obvious youngest but he started off the smallest of the babies too, and his temper has quite made up for that. Ugh. His crankiness is wearing on all of us.
On the flip side, he's not feeling well so he's so clingy. He wants me and only me. He wants to be carried, he wants to be held, and not just held but he wraps his arms around me and buries his head. He has hugs and kisses and pleas for attention and cuddling. I can't hold it against him, but any parent knows that sometimes after a screaming and crying jag (him, not me), sometimes it's hard to be the comforting mom he needs me to be.
And then I had a headache. Joy. Thankfully his nap continued after we came home from lunch so while Ian had the other kids I layed down with the little man. We both got up feeling better and I think that with school resuming this week we'll try to get a nap in the first couple days when he gets home. I just want my happy boy back.