Our Sundays

Like I wrote in an earlier post, thanks to our sweet Chase and his early risin' habits, we do not struggle with the "mad rush out the door to get to church on time" here in the Hugo home. We are always ready in plenty of time for church. Our challenge lies elsewhere- in keeping the toddler, who at that point has already been up for 4 hours and is ready for nap #1 (yes, he still takes 2 naps, I love it!) happy and entertained. When Chase gets tired, he gets grumpy and hyper. He can't hold still. He doesn't want any type of structure or rules to follow. As you can imagine, it just gets more fun when we get to sacrament meeting.

Our self-timer photos before church this morning-

the challenge of getting the baby to look at the camera and smile

Today Chase made it through a whole 55 minutes of sacrament meeting before he lost it and spent the remainder of the meeting out on the balcony with Ben. Those first 55 minutes he mostly spent begging for treats from the kind souls sitting in front of us. (Because their treats were obviously more enticing than the treats I packed for him) Chase would point to their treat bag, sign please and more repeatedly until he got some goods. It was kind of endearing, if not a little embarrassing. I promise, we feed him. He just wants any and all food he can get his little hands on. Ben says we have a family home evening lesson on greed in our future. 

Needless to say, when we get to drop him off at nursery we both breathe a sigh of relief. He's not technically nursery age, but my friend Jessica, who is the nursery leader, lets him come. He has a blast in there. A few weeks ago Ben watched Chase get super excited when Jessica walked into nursery, then immediately went over and pulled out the playmat, sat on it, looked at Jessica and signed "please". Ben was a little confused at what he wanted, until Jessica clarified that she pulls out the playmats and has them sit for snack time. Chase was just informing her that he was ready for cookies!

As I'm reading about Chase's church antics two themes seem to pop up-
1.apparently we let lots of other people help us with our kiddo during church, and
2. his whole world apparently revolves around snacks.

Neither of these seem to put us in a very good light. However, we are extremely grateful to all the sweet people in our branch who are so kind to our boy and are willing to share their food with him. It takes a village, right? Please know that all three Hugos appreciate you!