"Only funny later" anecdotes

We've had some memorable moments in church lately.  First there was the week where Morgan was playing with our friend's iPhone (I know, bad idea, but at the time we were nervously enjoying the peace and quiet).  Somehow she found Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and it started blasting right in the middle of a missionary's talk.  I didn't realize how long it really took to silence a phone until that moment.  The next week, Morgan was doing her usual stand-in-the-pew and check out everyone behind us routine, and kind of flopped her belly against the bench.  Out comes this enormous open mouth belch that I swear could be heard anywhere in that chapel.  It was either die of mortification or die of of laughter, so I got the giggles (silently, of course) and shook in our pew until I thought I would lose bladder control.  I'm not sure what entertained Erik more, his belching daughter or his hysterical wife.  This last Sunday the first speaker finished his talk and everyone said "Amen" including our very fervent/noisy daughter and then she yells for all to hear, "Nursery!"  You see, she knows that nursery comes after the last prayer, which ends with an amen, so she was impatient, heard an amen, and decided it was time.  Poor kid still had another 30 minutes to wait.  Let's just say that our congregation is getting pretty excited to see what Morgan will come up with every week.

In other Morgan news, we've been gradually weaning her off the binky, hoping to have her cured before the baby comes and taunts her constantly with his.  She's been down to just a binky in the car and the bed for many months, so it hasn't been as painful as it could have been.  It wasn't hard at all to remove the car binky, because she's so fascinated with the world she's driving by.  Her favorite is to tell us the color of all the stop lights, and whether to stop or go.  Then we tried a cold turkey bedtime with no binky, and it was awful.  I felt like I was a new mother again, up every hour with a crying baby.  I'm pregnant, I'm already sleep deprived, and I caved.  I just wasn't fully committed yet.  She got her binky back so we could get some sleep, and the next day we started Operation Binky.  First we discovered a whole series of Elmo clips on YouTube encouraging kids to get rid of their binkies.  She watched the following clip over and over.

Then we gathered all remaining binkies together, told her repeatedly that these were the only ones left, and then started bribing her into throwing them away.  One time I let her use scissors to dissect the binky (thanks for the idea, Josilyn!), and the rest I gave her Halloween candy for.  Her own Halloween candy.  Hehe.  I loved that idea.  She chucked the last one yesterday morning, voluntarily, asking for candy... and then we experienced naptime.  A solid hour of wailing, moaning, and screaming.   Last night she went right to bed, exhausted from a napless day.  Around 2 or 3 AM, she started crying, refused to be comforted, and we enacted tough love.  Tough for both Morgan and us, since no one got any sleep until she finally wore herself out 2 hours later.  Then we got up early to take Erik to the airport (maybe we could have planned the timing better...) She finally did nap briefly today, after another long period of crying, and then she woke up really mad at me.  We'll see how tonight goes, but as my friend says, it always gets worse before it gets better.  Like it or not, Morgan, your binky days are over.