Affirmation

"No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye.  No bye bye."

I remember the days when I yearned for them to start to talk.  I wanted so badly to understand them, as they intrinsically understood me.

"No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go.  No go."

Now, I wonder if I'll make it through the day as the words pierce through my every thought, interrupt my conversation and never ever stop.

"Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange.  Dulce orange."

Okay!  Okay, babies!  Okay!  I hear you.  I hear you.  I understand.  It's your orange, your grandmother's not going anywhere, and we don't have to say goodbye to her.  I heard you the first time!

The thing we have to remember as parents is, the babies don't know we heard them if we don't acknowledge them.  Statements like "dry hands," "wet hair," and "no outside" may seem like they don't require a response.  They're simply observations.  They're not aimed at us specifically, or so we think.  But, really, they are.  Everything coming out of the babies' mouths are aimed at us.  We are their sole audience.  It seems to us that they talk just to talk all the time.  But they're not talking just to talk.  They are talking to us.  They are having a conversation.

And we may think we are the patient ones, but really, the babies are the ones being patient.  Instead of fuming over the adults in the room completely ignoring them, they innocently assume we didn't hear them, or we didn't understand.  Obviously, to be heard they need to say it again.  And again.  And again.  Until their words are recognized.  Until they are recognized.

We should recognize our children as they make huge steps in the communication process.  It's easy to tune them out, but even something as unimportant as "blue shirt" is important to them.  And so many times they are making connections that we are unaware of, and they're doing their best to communicate that with us - telling us a story, two words at a time.  Dulce just came up to me to alert me that she needed a diaper change.

"Big poop."

We went to change her, and as she's laying back, she changes her wording from "big poop" to "outside poop."  She was reminding me of the duck poop I had warned her about earlier in the day, when we were outside, looking at the duck pond.

And these conversations are person specific, so that if the babies are telling their father "no night night," it will do absolutely no good for me to acknowledge that.  They will continue to repeat it until he says it back to them.  Then, satisfied, they nod sagely, stick their thumbs in their mouths and quiet down.

All they are looking for is acknowledgement, recognition, validation, affirmation.  And really, isn't that all anyone is looking for out of life?

___
Don't forget to vote for Tales of an Unlikely Mother if you like it!