Ahhh!!!

That is what I felt like doing yesterday at church. AJU1 has been our church's AV guy, which means he sits in the little room upstairs running everything instead of downstairs with us. There have been Sundays where AJU5 has been somewhat of a handful, but it has been fairly easy to deal with really. Yesterday was not he case. First, she was going back and forth from the nursery to our pew. She was come and suck on her pacifier and drink a little and then head to the nursery. This wouldn't be too bad if she was tall enough to open the nursery door. Instead, she had to stand in front of the door and yell (because, well, she has no volume control it seems) open and then Mommy if they didn't open the door fast enough. Then, she came and sat down for a while. She wanted a hymnal, which I was happy to give her. But then she started to yell the letter she saw. Again, she has no volume control, so she was quite loud. I tried to tell her to whisper, to be quiet, to close her mouth. I tried the pacifier; I tried gently holding her mouth shut; I tried putting my hand over her mouth. Nothing worked. "Luckily" she gave up after a while and went back towards the nursery. Unfortunately, she did not go to the nursery. She went to the water fountain and yelled for me again. So, I went and got her and took her outside (we have a very small church, and there was no good place to take her inside - luckily it wasn't that cold out and she still had her jacket on). She creid to get back in. A friend offered to hold JAU6 for me, but since AJU5 was just crying and AJU6 was asleep in my arms, I kept him. At the point she was heading back in, AJU1 came out. He tried to get AJU5 to calm down, but there was no success there. So, he went back in. Eventually she did calm down, so we walked in. But, as soon as we were inside she started balling again. So, I rushed her into the small room opposite the nursery and tried to talk to her. Before too long the husband of the friend that had offered to hold AJU6 came to take over for AJU1 (he has been the back-up guy). So, AJU1 came and AJU5 calmed down again. We were able to go sit in the pew for the last song and announcements. Now, AJU5 didn't cry for two reasons at that point - eating and the sleeping! I knew half of the issue was she was tired. But, it is impossible to get her to nap unless she is totally exhausted or in her bed...

At the end of service (during announcements), my husband asked for volunteers to help with the AV things so he can be with us more weeks. The back-up man already had told him he was up for helping again (since his kids were older now so he wasn't as needed in the pew to contain them). After service, another man and two women in the church offered to learn how to help as well. So, hopefully, within the next month, we will get to the point where AJU1 will be with us most weeks (they are going to rotate working upstairs). This should make it so we can train AJU5 since there will be two of us! I won't have to juggle both kids most weeks, and both of us will be there to enforce the rules.

The hard thing for me has been the running back and forth. The nursery isn't too insulated, so letting her cry to come out isn't an option. But, trying to keep her in the pew normally resulted in crying as well. But, with two of us we should be able to contain her easier... We will see!