18 months and...no nursery

Turning a year and a half old is a very exciting thing for an LDS child. Or, perhaps I should say, it's a very exciting thing for the LDS parents of a child when that child turns 18 months old, since at that point the child can go into nursery.

I've been pretty good about not trying to take Sylvia early--I took her once in January, the first day we were back, and I sat with her for all but about the last 20 minutes, when I realized she really didn't care if I was there--the toys were more interesting than me.

Sylvia officially turned 18 months old on the 7th of this month, but I was at Brown University, working very hard to process as many sediment and TLE (Total Lipid Extract) samples as possible for compound specific isotope analysis. Lots of fun--lots of work--and a great reminder that I really do love being in lab and doing organic geochemistry. What can I say, even doing columns, which makes me a little batty after a while, is pretty fun!

In any case, Sylvia hasn't been to nursery because I was out of town. I was looking forward to actually listening in Sunday school and Relief society, knowing Sylvia would be occupied elsewhere, but when I woke up, Sylvia had a runny nose. So, she stayed with me, we walked the halls a lot, and she slept on me during Relief society.

The little bits of lessons I caught did make me a little less than excited to going back to full attention mode. In sacrament meeting the second talk was on personal revelation, which always leaves me feeling uncomfortable, since in my life "personal revelation" looses to rational decision making hands down, particularly in terms of the outcomes of decisions I've made by following each. The third talk was basically a synopsis of a story from Pres. David O. McKay--something about a horse named Dandy who dies because he escapes the tethers that keep him out of trouble and eats some poisoned oats (which brings up a question--why, on a farm with horses, would you leave out poisoned oats? Couldn't you find a better substance with which to tempt rats that wouldn't also potentially kill your horses?). Sunday school was about Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, but fortunately bland rather than offensive. Still, I couldn't help but wonder how many of the people in the room would be comfortable pitching their tents toward these folks, and wouldn't worry about becoming desensitized to the anger boiling from their pores.