Wedding Antics

Yesterday, my cousin got married. It was a beautiful ceremony in a beautiful church with a string quartet. At just the right moment, a ray of sunshine shone across the wedding party directly onto my cousin, the glowing bride. Wow. The whole thing was stunning. Really, the tone of the whole wedding was very serene. However....Elijah was invited. Elijah is a social bundle of energy. He is either sleeping or in motion. He doesn't have much of an awake-but-still mode. He happened to be awake at the wedding and that equals motion. He never stopped moving for over an hour. Never. Brian was assigned octopus wrestling duty for the day. I call it octopus wrestling because Elijah actually seems to have more than 4 appendages at any given moment when discretion, stillness, and quiet are required. Brian was exhausted afterwards. Here's a brief rundown of the event from Elijah's corner of the world:

-We arrived and were seated.
-4 minutes later, Elijah needed to go to the bathroom. Earlier this year, we actually ended up delaying our nephew's wedding because Elijah was in the bathroom, so we were alright with letting him go well before the actual start of the wedding this time.
-We all got settled again.
-2 minutes later, Elijah began the wiggling. From that point on, it never stopped.
-At various times, he flopped back and forth between Brian and Joseph, whenever he felt Brian let down his guard (probably because his muscles had cramped.)
-He kicked the pew in front of us so many times we became numb to the embarrassment of how much we were bothering the people in front of us. He wasn't even kicking on purpose. The current length of his legs means they were sticking straight out.
-He swayed and bobbed dramatically to every piece of music. It really is impossible to stop him from reacting to music. You should see him at Chipotle when they play their music. I actually think it's ok to react to music. I think the composers might approve, but I'm not sure the people around us did. I think my great-grandma who used to hum loudly at musical performances might understand him though.
-He whispered sometimes....in an intensely loud stage whisper. The acoustics at that church building were impressive, to say the least.
-He leaned over and his gum fell out of his mouth onto the floor, prompting even more stage whispering.
-He bent down to retrieve his gum and whacked his head on the back of the pew of the long-suffering family in front of us. At this point in time, we all tensed, waiting for the high-pitched scream he likes to use when he is injured. It never came. However, Joseph was so tense from Elijah's performance that he was overcome by a horrible giggling fit and almost passed out trying to hold it in. Because Joseph looked so funny, I was also overcome by a giggling fit. I also managed to hold it in.

At the end of the day, my cousin was married and still glowing and blissfully unaware of the activity in the 5th row, stage right. So, it all worked out in a beautiful and memorable day. We, in the meantime, have a bit more training to do with our young octopus.

Congratulations, my sweet cousin!