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9 Nov 2010
I have advanced linguistic skills. I can converse with the best of them. I’ve made conversation with the Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia (true), as well as many other people. At the moment though, on any given day, if you listened to me speak, you would think I had some sort of disorder or at least a vocal tic. This is because I spend the best part of 12 hours a day with a small child. So we don’t have lunch we have ‘lunch lunch lunch’, we don’t wear a nappy we wear a ‘nap nap nappy’ and we don’t sleep we have a ‘snoozy snooze snooze snooze’.
I don’t subscribe to the ‘baby talk’ concept. And yet I can be found in the supermarket asking the baby if he thinks ‘daddy would like muesli’. As if the baby cares what his father eats for breakfast!
I have tried, once I caught myself at it, to just talk in a normal way to Benedict. I am however, like the DVD that has a ‘pause’ when changing layers. By 7pm I am not always ‘speaking normally’ and continuing with the story. Sometimes, for a long time after 7pm, I am babbling incomprehensibly because I have been doing that all afternoon.
Do you see they cars? The black ones? The grey ones? Do you see them?
Of course he bloody sees them. He knows what a car is, and a cat and a dog and a bird. Tell me something I don’t know mama, the baby thinks as I go on about them! The experts tell you to tell the child what you are doing – describe your actions they say. This leads me to deliriously tell Robert how I am now putting the pasta into the pot; ‘see how it is boiling’ ‘see the steam’, and now I am going to stir the sauce ‘let’s get a spoon!’ And look! mama is now going to get really demented! She’s about to go outside and water the plant plant plants with a glass of wine, before she really loses her mind completely!
May 15, 2011 @ 23:15:18
PMSL. Have totally been been been there. Nothing is designed to make a person go quite so crazy as talking ostensibly to themselves all day.
Thanks for Rewinding at the Fibro!
May 15, 2011 @ 21:22:38
So glad to hear that I am not alone in this. Feeling like it has improved in the time since I wrote this post. But not much.
Thanks for the lovely blog love xox
May 15, 2011 @ 20:06:22
Ha! My girlfriend and I were discussing this the other day. She has recently returned to teaching after maternity leave, and has taken her mum voice with her. It hasn’t gone down too well with the 15 year olds.
May 15, 2011 @ 19:20:10
I have my ‘hysterical over-enthusiastic mum’ voice down pat. I’m crazy. My children have grown up a bit now and I know I embarrass them. It’s just the way it is. x
May 15, 2011 @ 17:55:07
“The baby goes Beep! Beep beep beep!” and on it goes. This post reminded me of a gorgeous children’s book that carries on in exactly this manner for many many pages. And by some miracle, even after so many years of such talk we can still manage to string a few coherent words together.
I am right now fulfilling my weekend rewind duties but would have visited you anyway, just because.
Love Michelle from a faraway land xx
Nov 09, 2010 @ 22:27:28
Oh, this made me giggle cos I’m exactly the same. My Bebito is now 2 and speaks so well that people don’t believe he’s only 2. I’m convinced it’s cos I talked to him constantly like you do. I’m such a verbal person that I had to talk to him even when he was teeny cos he was/is the person who I spend the most time with. It is hard to shift gears back and forth though.