Marybeth's Faith

It's been a busy week so far and it's only Tuesday!  This week our church, St. Lawrence, in connection with a neighboring church, St. Mark's, are having a Lenten Retreat.  It began Sunday evening and runs through Wednesday evening. 
The whole family has attended each night, even Marybeth.  This year we have a kid's retreat going on at the same time as the adult retreat, which is wonderful. My kids get to experience all of the Lord's greatness and all the retreat has to offer but in "kid size" information.  Usually they just attend with me but they miss most of what is talked about, since it is geared towards adults.  They really seem to be enjoying themselves this year.  Marybeth though is too young to go to the kid retreat so she does have to hang with mom and dad and her oldest sister and brother.  She is a trooper though, usually she's very quiet or talks quietly to herself.  Sometimes she does get a bit carried away and gets louder but then it's usually just a "da da da da...then she laughs"  She is definitely one to keep herself occupied and make others smile at the same time. 
She has also found that the Holy Water Font in the back of church is really cool.  We always touch some to her head and do the Sign of the Cross whenever we would enter church normally, but she has realized that she can do that for herself now. She leans down and puts her fingers into the water font, usually all of them and sometimes even the whole hand if we aren't quick enough. She then tries to begin the Sign of the Cross but makes it only as far as her mouth where she must first taste the water.  She then proceeds to wash her face but then does allows us to help her with the Sign of the Cross. It really is cute to see. Many people who have seen her do this ritual think it is the funniest thing to watch. 

Marybeth also has one other habit regarding our faith that she absolutely loves. Every meal we say Grace before we eat, however sometimes we are asked to say it a few times during dinner.  Marybeth loves to sit in her highchair and hold hands around the table. When we tell her we are saying Grace, she gets really excited and laughs.  She sometimes even smiles and laughs during it.  If the mood hits her, she holds her hands out to whoever is sitting next to her a few times during the meal to say it all over again.  We have also found that those days when she wants nothing to do with her highchair and would rather sit on mom or dad's lap to eat, we can "bribe" her to get into it by saying it time for grace. Soon she'll realize that we'll say grace even if she is on our laps and that it isn't dependent of whether she sits in her highchair.  So until she puts that together, we'll continue to use the bribe to our advantage.