Volume Control

There is none. There is no such thing as volume control in this house.

I'm pretty positive that my little girls can generate more volume than any other children on the planet! I remember when Gabs was about 18 months telling my mom that she was so loud. She chattered loudly. She cried loudly. She laughed loudly. She screamed loudly. She did everything so loudly. My mom would tell me, "She's just a little baby. All babies are loud." That's what she told me...until we went and visited her. Then she told me I was right. Gabriella was loud.

She still is. Now it just makes sense. Her loud chatters are now loud pretend play. Or loud requests for a snack. Her loud crying is now loud, dramatic crying. Her loud laugh is now mostly just loud fake laughing at something she made up, that the rest of us didn't get at all. And her loud screams are now ear-peircing, highest frequency imaginable, as girly as you can get, running from one end of the house to the other end loud screams.

And Gwen is quickly learning from the best. She is making a respectable run for the loudest member of the family. She holds her own when it comes to generating noise. Luckily for me, right now it doesn't make sense, but none the less, her opinion is loud and clear.

Just when I think I've reached my limit of loudness and noise in a day, Joe gets home and the girls volume increases by 100 decibels. The loud laughing and screaming get even louder but include a 31 year old male now. It's obviously a Chiara trait...anyone who knows Joe knows he doesn't have a quiet bone in him.

When we were first married I remember looking at him in Sacrament meeting while we were singing hymns, awed at how loudly he was singing. I would try to tilt the hymn book so he couldn't see the words...maybe that would quiet him down. I was just so embarressed. Not because he was a bad singer, he's actually a very good singer. But because you just never want to be the guy (or girl sitting next to the guy) that's singing the loudest in Sacrament meeting. It's just so embarrassing.

It was a running joke for awhile. We'd be singing and I would think it was getting a little out of control, a little too loud, so I'd start to slowly tilt the book away from him. Then we would look at each other and I'd laugh and he'd pretend to be offended but he'd just start singing louder. It was always so funny.

Then he shared a story with me from when he was a little boy about Gabriella's age (3 or 4). He was singing in Sacrament meeting and his dad told him to stop singing because it was too loud and too out of tune. A poor little 3 or 4 year old! He has forever been scarred.

Gabriella is a singer. She always has been. She loves singing the Beach Boys, Sloop John B, and she sings along with the Wicked soundtrack. She is always wanting me to sing her anything and, over and over again. She loves to make songs up. Oh, and she sings so so loudly!

I will always remember that Joe never forgot about being told to "sshhh" while singing nearly 30 years ago, so I have never told Gabs to quiet down while she's belting a tune. While at church on Sunday a handful of people told me what a good singer she had been in Primary and how well she can sing. They were suprised with how well they could hear this little Sunbeam singing voice, suprised at how loud she was.

Me, not so much suprised with the whole volume thing. That's my Gabriella, she's a Chiara, a product of her Daddy!