Brooke and Sacrament meeting

I love my Brooke she is so full of personality and full of funny things she does all the time. But she is the most determined child also. This post is a record for her. So that when she is grown up and has kids I can say, You did the same thing!

Each week we struggle through sacrament meeting with her. The poor little girl gets so board so she struggles with sitting still. And a quite voice is not something this little girls has mastered.

Lets just talk about today's experience and you can imagine what every week must be like.

To understand today's experiences completely you have to understand this. We are in a small ward/Branch. We all fit in the chapel no problem. Our chapel has wood floors. No carpet so everything Echo's alot. And well there are not a lot of young kids in our ward. I guess there are more young kids then their are older kids but all the kids seem so well behaved. We just don't have the kid volume in our little branch that we had in our wards back home where there were so many kids making noise that our kid making noise wasn't really noticed. Our kid is certainly noticed.

Today we got to church early for tithing settlement. Which meant that boredom set in a little earlier than usual for my little toddler. Kind of before the opening prayer was even said. So by time the sacrament came around there was no hope at keeping her quite. My goal was to just keep her busy enough the she was distracted for the most part. But it didn't work. First she wanted her stickers put on her hands so I was helping her do that but I didn't do it just right so she shouts out... "NO OTHER ARM!" I tell her "o.k. but we have to shhhhhh. We can't talk so loud." So of course she talks louder for me because obviously I'm not understanding.

I get her stickers on the other arm and we have her quite for a second but then stickers get boring and she crawls up on my lap and looks directly in my faces and begins singing at the top of her voice. "I'M A GUMMY BEARS, O YES I'M A GUMMY BEARS, O I'M A YUMMY TUMMY FUNNY LUCKY GUMMY BEAR." ( for more of this song see link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_hF31z130&feature=related ). Yes friends in the middle of the sacrament my little girl broke into the gummy bear song in the loudest voice possible. Yes, I wanted to laugh really hard. I was trying to help her be quite but the more I tried the louder she got.

I found a new different book of stickers and I sent her down to Brian to see if he might have more luck with entertaining her. She took her book of stickers down to dad but quickly returned with "mom, I can't find my monkey sticker." She was quite distressed by not being able to find her monkey. So I thought I had better help her look through these animal stickers and help her find the monkey. We looked together at the stickers I pointed out the bear and some other animals as we looked for a monkey and then she saw a Lion and she declared "WOW a LION! A LION SAYS RRRRROOOAARRRRRRRRR!". It was by far the longest loudest most excited roar, I had ever heard in my life. Had we not been in sacrament meeting, I would have been fulling entertained by her and even roared with her. But again I had to tell her that hear we had to be quite. Again, she was persistent in telling me exactly what a lion said.

I then had to go up to the front to sing a Christmas song with the relief society. It gave me a small bit of joy to leave her with Brian this time as usually it is Brian going to help with passing the sacrament and leaving me with this experience. Of course the whole time Brooke is yelling for "Mamma! Mamma!". So loudly that I could hear her clearly over the top of our choir performance.

After I came back and sat down she noticed Lucas. Lucas is a friend from nursery. A friend that was sitting in his chair just two rows up so nicely and so quietly. She yells "LUCAS!, LOOK MOMMA, ITS LUCAS!". I'm just wondering who spiked my child with caffeine in her genetics. Everything is on SUPER power.

That was it, I took her out to a class room and we stood in a corner together. I talked to her about quite voices. This isn't the first time. Every Sunday, we visit the corner in a classroom and talk about quite voices at least 1 time. Does it work no. We come back in and the same loud voice is used. But I feel like I have to try something.