Blast From The Past

This picture and blast from the past moment is for one of my reader's who thought her daughter had a big owie for back-to-school photos. Grace be glad it Maddy's didn't bruise like Laura's did.

And for the curious here is the story on how this happened:

This was taken December 2006 when Laura was 13 months old. She'd been sitting on our bed petting one of the cats while I got dressed. I had just put my socks on and realized I'd left my shoes a few steps away. I got off the bed and as I walked across the room, Katelyn (then just turned 5) walked past me to also pet the cat. Only she tripped over the area rug and fell into the bed....hard. Now we have hardwood floors and the bed is on a frame with wheels. (we've never had a bedroom set just the frame that comes with the mattresses...cheap I know, LOL!) I turned around to make sure Katelyn was okay since I'd heard her yelp in pain to find that cat was flying through the air in one direction and Laura in the other......right towards the bookcase. The force of Katelyn falling into the bed had catapulted both cat and lightweight little sister off the bed. I raced to catch Laura.....but she hit the bookcase a second before I got to her. She hit the bookcase with her nose bridge. The result was a screaming baby with a large cut (luckily not deep enough for stitches) and a very swollen and bruised nose bridge. It took a couple of weeks for the swelling to go down and a good month for the bruise to go away. The cut....well at almost 4 years of age, if you look closely you can see a faint scar from the incident.

Oddly enough about the whole thing is that with Katelyn, as a first time mom I did the whole freak out when she rolled off our bed onto a carpeted floor in the home we lived in. I never placed her on a bed alone til she could sit up and NOT crawl or roll off. When Laura came along, I never placed her on the bed as a tiny infant and we only had just started letting her up there to pet the cats if we were in there. She would never move from the center of the bed. She'd sit there petting the cat as happy as a lark. So it wasn't like she was moving. It was all a freak accident caused by a clumsy big sister. She wouldn't come near our bed for a long time.....and actually neither would Katelyn. Both were too afraid after the whole ordeal. Don't rightfully blame them but in looking back that makes me chuckle a little.

Stake Conference

Or as I like to title it.....

Stake Conference + Katelyn + Laura = Why Do We Even Bother?

Okay so I know this is what we should be doing. But when we do try it always ends up pretty much like today went....minus the child in the bathroom stall (more on that in a second). What makes today extra frustrating is that Katelyn FINALLY started sitting through Sacrament meetings each Sunday just fine about a year ago (when we do manage to arrive on time by the way...she does well in the foyer too though) and yet she was part of the problem today.

First I've got to explain to my readers who are not LDS/Mormon what a Stake is. Our church is pretty large and we just do go to meetings each Sunday and boom that's it. We have a variety of things that we do within our church. Members are assigned to congregations called wards or branches based on their geographical area. Then anywhere from 6-8 wards and branches make up a Stake. We do a lot of stuff at the ward level but we do have meetings and events on a stake level as well. Typically a church building will house 2-3 wards that will meet at different times each Sunday. One main building that is slightly larger is called a stake center and twice a year we meet there for a Stake Conference with all the wards. Today was one of those meetings.

Now those with young kids currently or those who have ever had young kids know how hard it can be just to deal with them for regular Sunday meetings. I'm sure that is true of any church you belong to. But me....I dread Stake Conferences with my 2 kids. It's hard enough for each Sunday in our ward meetings. Get them around so many others and it's worse. This is why I tend to stay home when I hear Stake Conference is coming up (and Allison feel free to forward this to your dad....the bishop might get a good laugh over some of my girls' antics today....esp the bathroom one)

Raile's arrive 10 minutes before the meeting starts at 10 a.m. Girls sit still that entire time.

Stake Pres. gets up to start the meeting, music starts, Laura says "I gotta go pooootttttyyyy!" So I rush her down the hall. Apparently she had to do more than potty. We were in there a loooong time. Of course part of that included her locking the door (she wants her privacy so I'll just hold the door from the outside in case she needs help) and NOT being able to open it. Other women come in, smile and laugh when I say I'm trying to get her to crawl under. A few other moms tried to get their kids to crawl under and open the door for her. They were younger than her and unable to. Still Laura would not come out. And she wouldn't let me leave her in there to go get help. She'd start to cry. Finally I get her to crawl under for me. I get her washed up and take her in to Clark. Grab Katelyn who is pitching a fit because she doesn't need to go potty and I explain to her what happened and have her climb under the door so she can unlock it. She does. Get her washed up and back in to sit down. And by this time I catch the last 2 minutes of the Stake Presidents talk.

Okay girls are okay, I start to listen to the next speaker. Oh no! A STRANGER sits down next to Katelyn. She freaks out! Starts climbing up Clark like he's ladder. He's getting mad. She won't settle down. I'm on the end so I get to take her out to calm her down. By the time I get back in, we're on to the next speaker.

So we allow her to sit in daddy's lap. She's fine until she decides to start pinching little sister. Daddy takes her out this time. A minute after he takes her out, Laura discovers that her new Sunday shoes light up. So she starts pounding her feet hard on the wood floor where we are seated. People around us clearly annoyed. I sit her in the chair and she proceeds to start banging the shoes on the chairs which is even louder. I ask her to stop, she screams. Sigh. Take her out. Find husband in halls. Switch kids.

I come back in with Katelyn in time for the last 5 minutes of the 3rd speaker and try and figure out what his talk was about. Then it's time for a congregational hymn. Everyone standing and moving gets the heavy perfumes of the women around me wafting through the air. We sit down and through the next couple of speakers I'm sniffling or sneezing and my head is spinning from the smells of the perfumes. But I was determined not to leave the room.

Last speaker begins his talk. I'm finally feeling like my head is not going to explode and throughout his talk I'm getting "I want my sister!!!" in a whiney 7 yr old voice next to me. "shhh" I say. Then "I'm bored!" "I brought crayons and color book" I tell her. "But I don't want to color!" she says. I tell her to shush. Then "I want daddy!" "You can see him when the meeting is over." "But mommy this guy is taking way too long! I want to go home!" I hiss, "Quiet now or I'll take you out for a spanking! I'm that close!" I finally catch some of Elder Evans' (of the Seventy) talk. I hear about being financially smart or something to that effect.

Now here is where it is probably my fault that I didn't hear some of the talk. You see in the choir was one of our ward friends...Robert Magalogo...and he was sitting up on the stand where you could see his face on the extra screens becaus of the way they positioned the camera so those in the back could see the speakers. And when Elder Evans started his being financially smart part, Robert is up there laughing, making faces and hand signs to his wife who was sitting up in the front of the choir area. Now the camera didn't show her, just Robert but I looked to see her reaction because I know she would know he was doing something and her reaction was funny. Even after she turned back around and ignored him, Robert still make nodded in agreement to what Elder Evans was saying. And well I found it all quite comical and kept laughing silently. I hoped nobody noticed that......but Katelyn and she proceeded to annoy me with "what's so funny?" til nearly the end of his talk.

And then "I gotta go potty!" and she was doing the potty dance in her chair. Rush her out. Come back in. Catch Elder Evans' testimony and the choir singing at the end.

So now ask me what I even got out of Stake Conference today. And when I can't answer please help me to answer my burning question......

Why did we even bother going?

I know this shall pass...that soon they'll be grown and I'll wish for their childhood again. But I for one will relish in the fact that I can sit through a Stake Conference knowing it's not my kids causing a ruckus or locking themselves in bathroom stalls for the 1/3 of the meeting.

Book of Mormon Progess

Another month has come and gone. As you can see, Katelyn made great progress for August. We are well into Alma.....just finished up chapter 43 tonight. She is asking more questions, making more comments as we go along. She really wanted to have finished Alma before school started. However even with where we are now, we are 2 days ahead of our reading schedule before of how she wanted to double up here and there along the way.

Articles of Faith progress....she is still working on learning #4. Even teaching her the song for it, it is just a bit too long for her and so she's taking her time learning it. That's okay though. She'll get it if we practice enough. I'm really proud of her desire to work on both these goals. She may be our challenging child in many ways but she's a great kid with a heart of gold and a desire to do what Heavenly Father wants her to do. Keep up the good work Katelyn!