Where is the Off Switch?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, we spend the first two years of our kids’ lives teaching them to walk and talk, and then the next sixteen telling them to sit down and shut up. My son has such a bad case of verbal diarrhoea at the moment I’m thinking of inserting an Imodium up his bottom to see if it works in reverse.

I do love to listen to him talk, of course, and I am proud that he is taking notice of the world around him and finding so much to say. That is, when he’s not teamed up with his sister whining for something, or ‘lumming’ as we call it. You know, someone once said that a baby’s cry is specifically tuned in to their mother’s consciousness so that she cannot ignore it; something along the lines of a pneumatic drill outside your front room I think is how they described it. It makes perfect sense: baby cries, Mummy picks it up - because it feels like her eardrums are going to burst. It is now apparent to me that they keep this ability as they get older but cunningly exploit other sensitive sounds to prevent Mummy from becoming immune. Rose and I are both susceptible to the same trigger. You know that moment on a hot summer night, when you have just finished scratching the latest crop of insect bites on your legs and finally turned out the light? Then, out of the darkness, somewhere just above your head, you hear that distinctive, high pitched ‘eeeEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee… eeeeeeeEEEEeee… eeeEEEEEEEE…’ of a small, hungry mosquito looking for it’s next meal. (And you know you’ll never be able to find it if you turn on the light and all the repellent in the world won’t make the little bugger go away.) Well, that’s the sound our kids make now when they follow us round the kitchen, on the lum, whining ‘MumeeeEEE… can I play on the computer?' 'MummEEEEEE.. can I have something to eat?’ It’s astounding we still have any hair left; I’ve already chewed away all my finger nails.

Then there’s Pickle’s current favourite: every sentence starts with ‘Muuum? d’you know…?’ Then he’ll launch into a monologue about how he can’t wait to marry his little girlfriend and wondering what their children will look like and whether he’ll be a train driver or a farmer and deciding how he’ll be taller than his sister when he’s seven and describing how he rescued so-and-so’s toy car from under the fence in the playground and on and on and on. Bless his little cotton socks and khaki combats. I do try hard to be attentive and keep nodding and smiling and saying, ‘Really, darling?’ and ‘Gosh how interesting!’ at the appropriate times but often I find myself tuning out and thinking about Mummy stuff like the shopping list or whether I should put on a darks or a whites wash next or how to make broccoli exciting for a 5 year old tonight... (yes, it’s exciting stuff, my internal dialogue.)

And that’s when he comes out with the profound, heart-warming, bottom-lip-wobbling observations like, ‘Muuuum? d’you know?… I’m so glad that I am in the world because it’s so pretty with all the flowers and colours.’

Well you can’t argue with that can you?