Jane screams.

Jane is 15 months old. She is emerging as a talker and signer. She can say, "Please pass the granola" ("Eeee aahhhh uhhhh...ohla!") (she uses this any time she wants food) and, if you ask her who should say the prayer she shouts, "I ooo (choose) Dad!" She can sign amen, food, more, banana, water, mom, and dad. Dad looks the same as mom, but I can tell she's signing dad because she says, "Dad!" while signing mom. Ha ha!

She's very good at saying no. Actually, that's not true. I don't think she's ever SAID no, she just screams it. And if she wants something, but you're not paying attention, she screams as well. Really, if she doesn't like what's going on, she's going to scream until conditions become more favorable. I took her to Lige's piano lesson yesterday. The teacher had a bunch of knick-knacks (huh, had to look up the spelling of that word...) that Jane couldn't play with. Jane didn't like that, so she screamed...pretty much the entire lesson. The teacher should have charged extra for that one.

Jane is not in favor of Sacrament meeting right now. At first, I was a little slow to take her out when she screamed because most of my kids have been able to calm down after a few seconds of stern looks from Mom at this age. And besides, we're in a Deaf branch. Most people can't hear her, right?

Well, it turns out that's not the case. For example, this week I took Jane out of Sacrament meeting and sat with her in the foyer while she screamed. Through the glass chapel doors, I could see deaf people with hearing aids looking around for the source of the noise. Then during Primary, Jane screamed more. I could see people flinching when she did. You can tell the sound is uncomfortable.

I seem to observe that hearing aids are useful, especially in Primary where kids can't always sign as well as they wish, but they're not perfect, and it seems that a screaming baby is the definition of the worst way to treat a friend with a hearing aid.  And yet, Jane won't stop screaming.

So next week, we're going all the way to the mother's room to get our screams out.

(Completely off-topic, but funny, story: my sister-in-law's bishop accidentally called it the "crying mother's room" one time. Which is what ours will become if Jane doesn't stop screaming all the time soon!)

And in case you're wondering, our mother's room has a video feed of Sacrament meeting, not just audio. Hooray for technology!