Blog

During the morning church service Zakary as always was more interested in squirming his way out of every person’s lap that tried to hold him. He wouldn’t stay long on my lap, Kirsten’s, Alyssa’s or even Dailin’s. Knowing he is off the boat he loves to roam free. It’s not every day he has a chance to wander around a large room with other people.

As he wandered down our aisle, he ran over to the exit and tried to turn the deadbolt lock. Fortunately he could just spin it a little bit but not enough to lock the door. He then wandered over to the fire extinguisher and tried tugging and pulling on that before Jaeden ran over to move him away from the bright red canister. That’s when he decided he would try walking down the aisle behind us. I though it was pretty safe as there were a few nice people there that were amused by his wanderings. As he approached the end of the aisle and was directly behind Kirsten (who did not notice where he was), the young Tahitian woman sitting by her brother insisted that he share one of his chocolate chip cookies with Zakary. It was too late, I could not do anything, before I knew it, he had a full cookie in his hand. He looked over at me and smiled with the biggest grin on his face knowing he had scored big time. I cringed to think of the mess that those chocolate chips were bound to make.

Zakary came walking up to our row with the cookie in his hand to show his mom what he had scored. She looked around to see where on earth he had managed to find a full chocolate chip cookie only to see the girl behind him smile with a “It was our pleasure” look on her face. Zak fell down and the cookie broke into two pieces but he just picked it up and headed toward me. I had hoped that he would stay with his mom because I know that this was bad news.

As he came over I did an incredible job of keeping his brand new white shirt nice and clean. I simply broke up the cookie into manageable small pieces while he ate them up. But true to Zakary’s nature as the messiest boy in the world he could not resist living up to his reputation. He chewed on a big bite of his cookie and then started to spit it out so that it would drop down on his nice white shirt. I tried to catch the second half of his mouthful in my hand but it just started dropping all over the place. His shirt was starting to look like his chocolate chip cookie. I reached for a wet wipe to gather up the cookie remnants and to try to wipe up the chocolate stains off of his shirt. It was a bold attempt but did little more than gently smudge the chocolate splotches on his shirt.

In all of this Zakary did not seem to mind. He had a permanent grin on his face and was happy to be able to color his white shirt with his snack. I kind of panicked and it was at that moment that Kirsten came to rescue me from Zakary’s chocolate covered hands. He almost smeared them in my tie and white shirt but I managed to dodge his hands. Kirsten just pulled his shirt off and took him for a walk. I think the lady behind us who was now watching the events unfold, was getting an idea of why here little gift to Zakary was perhaps not what his parents preferred.