Boy, but the girl can talk. Our daughter, bless her little heart, starts off slow in the morning. Together at breakfast, I’m able to read my book, perhaps look out the window, all to the glorious sounds of silence and munching as Child Harbat works through a piece of toast. Then, properly fed, she begins to start up.
“I saw a Muppet movie at school where Gonzo was there and…and…a bear was trying to come out of an envelope! Is that funny?”
I will respond in the affirmative, trying to not to engage too much. After all it’s still about 6:45 and I’m not a morning person. She’s unfazed.
“And then there was a worm and…my school…they did a movie…when I was watching…fifteen hundred of million of things were falling…if you ever seen something like that, Babbo?”
Sometimes listening to her is like listening to the radio as you slowly scan the stations. Little sound bites, completely unrelated, pile up on each other like a conveyer belt dumping material onto a growing pile. By the end of breakfast, she’s on a roll and it’s hard for me to get a word in edgewise to ask her to clear her dishes, get dressed, make her bed. Brushing her teeth in the morning is like jamming a toothbrush into an angry wood chipper—it’s all teeth and noise.
I’m not sure if she talks this much at school, but I can’t imagine she’s silent. Dinnertime is a struggle for my wife and I to get in a few words to each other, and sometimes we just talk over her like two people on a date at a rock concert, screaming to be heard. It isn’t until we start book reading that she quiets down for a minute, but once the lights go out in her room, she’s back to talking and humming to herself.
I know I’ll miss this with an aching heart when she grows up and leaves the nest, but for now I just want this baby bird to shut her beak for a few minutes and give me some blessed silence!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Oh how I love a morning chit-chatter like myself. More power to her. The “It’s my turn now” might sound like a broken record and while enforcement is difficult, it teaches those social skills. Love that little girl!
So relate to this. My now almost 5 year old is a chatterbox. She’s pretty good about saying, “Excuse me,” before breaking into the grownup conversation. However, talking over hear head is not an option since she will break in.