I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but my girls talk a lot. A whole lot. They keep themselves awake during naps and at night with their own talking, they have a hard time hearing each other over their talking, and they don’t stop talking long enough to hear the answer to a question they’ve asked, which just results in a lot of raised voices and repeated answers.
The other night I was putting Peanut to bed, singing her the bedtime song of her choice (“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”) and had to start the song over three times because she kept prattling on about her grandma, cousin, and silly uncle, and couldn’t hear the song over her own chatter. Halfway through the song each time, she’d cover my mouth and say, “Start over, I didn’t hear the song!” By the third round, I told her I wasn’t starting over any more, and if she wanted to hear it, she needed to close her mouth and open her ears. She tried to stop talking, covering her own mouth with her hand, but even that brief song was too long for her to keep quiet through.
When they aren’t talking, the girls are singing. They know the whole Disney princess anthology of songs, and songs from all of their favorite shows, and after exhausting that repertoire, they resort to making up their own songs: long, complicated show-tune-style numbers with dance moves and emotive facial expressions, full of silly lines like “I like you and the sun! Let’s look out the window and then have apples!” (where apples would raise to an operatic soprano, and be drawn out to about five syllables).
It’s not that they aren’t entertaining to listen to, or that I don’t appreciate their communication skills or creativity, it’s just that, sometimes, I’d like a few moments of quiet, absolute quiet, to just hear my own thoughts.
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