"Me Too!" (on Praying with a Two Year Old...)

Oh the drama that family prayer time can bring when a two year old is in the house.

Earlier in the week I wrote about Sadie learning her prayers. She would practice saying "Holy Mary, Mother of God!" when we said the rosary together, and this happened to begin on a night when Paul worked late. The next night, however, he was home and the family rosary was back to normal.

Things started off really well. I usually lead and count prayers on my fingers since I'm holding Mae, which means Paul says the second part of each prayer. I smiled encouragingly at Sadie as she joined Daddy on the responses and her little face glowed as she said the words. She actually responded to eight of the first ten Hail Mary's in the decade.

Then, in typical two year old fashion, the smile turned stormy in a matter of moments. When we started the second decade, instead of saying the response Sadie began to say "Me too! Me too!" in a loud, annoyed voice.

"You can pray too. Say it along with Daddy." I told her quietly (hoping Mae would go easily to sleep for once and thinking that the addition of "Me too! Me too!" was making that considerably less likely).

When the "Me too's" continued I asked Daddy to say the prayer very slowly. When that failed we began to realize that "Me too!" actually meant "Just me!"

I think Sadie actually would have been happy to have the prayer go something like this:

Mommy: "Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

Sadie: "Holy Mary, Mother of God!"

Daddy: "Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

Knowing Sadie, she'd probably like to take over the "Amen!" too...

After a few moments Sadie realized we weren't caving in on this particular battle and promptly fell asleep, although I'm sure she'll be prepared to continue it another day...

I have to admit, hearing her sweet little prayers never fail to put a smile on my face!