Small talk

I already know why my son will stop talking to me when he's a teenager. It's because for the first twelve years of his life he will have talked to me incessantly about things I am not interested in and I will tell him numerous times, when I have reached capacity, that I don't want to talk anymore and can he please zip it. That I'm not that interested in electricity. Or the settings of my iPhone. Or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is ironic since I'm the one that introduced him to both the book and the movie as they are my favorites. Rather were my favorites until he talked about them so much that I wanted to drown him in a river of chocolate).

I need quiet. I need long periods of time during my day when no one is talking to me. Which is why I thank god every day for my mornings when I'm at home working or writing or whatever I'm doing. And I have these mornings so that by the afternoon I can pay attention to what he's saying and respond and engage and try my best to encourage his curiosity. I want him to ask questions. To think about how it all works and make his own sense of the world.  I just don't want to always answer him. Sometimes I can't answer him.  And why is it that I don't know how the scanner communicates to the printer. I mean I use these two things everyday. Why am I not interested? Because I just want it to work. I don't care how.

But he cares. He cares so much that he makes up stories about it. How the scanner speaks only in English to the computer and the computer has to translate the message into Hebrew because the printer only speaks Hebrew. And the scanner needs the computer to pass along his message to make the image print. I mean it's effing brilliant if you ask me, but hearing about it everyday makes me insane. He once told me about how there's someone else at school who likes to talk even more than he does and he told me about that person for forty-five minutes.

But I know a time will come when the roles will be reversed and I will desperately try to elicit conversation, even just information, from his eye-rolling, pimply head. And when he's silent I'll fill the silence with endless questions and stories and ramblings. But that will make him shrink away further. And there I'll be with no one to help me with my phone settings or my printer. And it will be my own damn fault.

Overheard

This is the conversation I just heard from the kitchen while my kids are playing in the yard:

Her: (crying)
Him: Did you fall down?
Her: Yes
Him: Did you get an owie?
Her: Yes
Him: You have to be more careful.
Her: I know
Him: Do you need a hug?
Her: Uh-huh.

I take back all of the horrible things I wrote about him. He's a gem. Now they're behind the house reprimanding their dolls and winnie the pooh for misbehaving.

Thirty minutes

The other day I was putting my sneakers on to go to the gym and my son asked when I'd be back.

Me: About half an hour.
Him: Is that how long you're supposed to go to the gym?
Me: It's a good amount of time.
Him: Is that because the lady in the exercise video told you?
Me: No, but that's how long she exercises too.
Him: How long is half an hour?
Me: 30 minutes.
Him: 30 minutes is a long time.
Me: It's not too long. I'll be back soon.

Pause. I actually thought the conversation was over.

Him: It's longer than 29 minutes.
That's when he flashed me a giant grin.

Off button

A friend of mine recently posted about how her four year old is driving her nuts with all of his questions, especially since most of the time he knows the answer. My son does that too. But I have to say what's more annoying is his endless making sense of everything. The other day I was trying to figure out how to use the new calling card I just bought so I could finally call my friend Miriam in Israel and my son was just piping away about the inner workings of my scanner. It went something like this:

Mommy, scanners are really good for sending pictures to grandma because you can open the lid, put the picture in it, press the button and listen for the scanning noises, whooszh, whooszh, and then the picture comes on the computer so you can put it in an email and send it Grandma! And then if I want to send another picture I just open the lid again and take out the first picture and put in another one, maybe of a frog or something like that, and then I do the whole thing again. Or maybe a rainbow or a triangle. But sometimes it's better if we print pictures, right mommy? Because then I just have to press the button so it turns orange and then you can press print when you click the mouse and then you put the paper in that I can't touch even though I really like paper but you say my hands are dirty but I just washed them and then I press the button again so the paper goes in and then the inks go! And they make the colors! Like the rainbow! Is it better to scan or to print mommy? I like printing better because then we can see the rainbow colors unless the printer needs more ink and then I have to open it for you and see the blinking light on the inks and take one out and you have to unwrap the new one and I put it in and then we close the lid again! And then I push the off button. We're really good at printing and scanning, right mommy? I love you mommy.

I wish it was as simple as pushing the off button. I had to finally walk away from the computer because I felt a brain hemorrhage coming on.

Can you hear me now?

My daughter has further endeared herself to me. We were browsing the latest Real Simple magazine (which incidentally has a tiny but adorable feature on my friend Jenn Louis who owns a catering company called Culinary Artistry and a relatively new restaurant called Lincoln up in Portland - must check out if in the area) and she was pointing out whatever she recognized. Cars. Flowers. Shoes. Then, bless her heart, she saw a picture of a beautiful Eileen Fischer model and said, Mommy! Even better, she turned the page, saw a picture of the Verizon Wireless guy (Can you hear me now?) and said sweetly, Aba!

Can you hear me laughing now?

The Superlativist

Right now is the best, worst, biggest, greatest, silliest, hugest, fastest, funniest time in my son's life. He's in the superlative stage and I must say it's quite charming to hear him go on and on in animated detail about his many adventures. It's clear to me that he's experimenting with language which I love. I remember when I was learning Hebrew, which wasn't too long ago, I knew I was nearing fluency when I no longer had to plan what I was about to say and when I could make up words based on these six verb paradigms that are the foundation of the language. It meant that I could verbify (see, I even make up stuff in English - what fun!) any word I wanted and seven out of ten times I was right. And the other three times I had my husband, colleagues, friends, bank tellers and telephone operators rolling on the floor laughing. But I was trying and trying leads to learning.

So it tickles me when I hear my son say things like, I'm eating the extra muchest mashed potatoes.

It gives me the giantest grin.