Liam is
going through some sort of stage right now where he constantly talks
ALL OF THE TIME WITH THE TALKING. His voice bounces off the walls of my
head at night when I'm trying to sleep. He's gone so far as to attempt
conversation with us while he's on the toilet. He stops speaking long
enough to grunt if needed. Sometimes he doesn't even speak in coherent
sentence; he just speaks to hear his own voice. I attribute this to my
and Chris's earlier over-parenting, wherein we zealously devoted our
undivided attention to Liam and were totally interested in every little
gurgle which resonated from his voice box, even if we were only
pretending. Now we have two kids and when you have two kids you quickly
learn that you can't be as zealous and over-devoted as you were with
the first because a) you don't have as much time and b) it will KILL
YOU. For instance, before Ewan was born, we fussed over every little
boo boo Liam acquired as though a trip to the ER was an imminent
possibility. Now we tell both boys: "Ah, here. Just put some Bactine on
it."
I've heard that you fill out every little space in your first
child's baby book; with the second kid you sort of get around to
writing their name in it. I thought "Oh that's awful, I will do the
same thing with my second as I did with my first," but I didn't.
Liam has a baby book stuffed to the point where it can't fully close -
in addition to a "baby box" filled with his First Onesie, First Socks,
First Hat, hair from his First Haircut. If it were for any purpose
other than documenting the infancy of my first child it would be called
a Stalker Box.
Ewan doesn't have a "baby box." It's because I'm a bad mother. Really
though, It's not that I care less for him, it's just that the chaos of
having children - plural - forced me to realize the priority of things
a while ago, and knowing when your first molar broke through isn't all
that important. When my mother showed me that she'd collected all of my
baby teeth and had them saved in a sandwich bag stowed in her belt
drawer I thought "Ugh. Sicko."
For real, I've never once needed to know when my first tooth came in or
when I first rolled over. Only for kindergarten bragging rights, maybe.
Except that Liam never got that memo, so it's still all of the time
with the talking. Now he has to contend with Tank (a.k.a. Ewan) for our
attention, a child who gets a gold star if he makes it through the day
without crapping all over himself or eating something gross. Perhaps
the never-ending talking isn't so bad after all.
