Small is talking.
Not actually talking you understand otherwise, yes, you’d be right in thinking I’ve skipped a few stages in the telling. But we are hearing proper babble. It crept up on us on holiday. He was ‘singing’ more. You know the Clangers? Suddenly there was one living in our house…. ‘Ooh ooh… Loo… Loo…ooh’. It’s beautiful to hear. It might not be to the outside world, but to us? Oh my goodness.
And then. Proper sounds. Suddenly we have ‘Bbbbb…’, ‘Yyyyy…’, ‘Ddddd…’ And these in turn run into M’s and Muh’s and lovely giggly Guh’s… And suddenly we see a developmental stage just slipping in there, under the door. I can hear his voice.
I have to repeat that sentence: I can hear his voice.
And it was only when I realised that I could, that I saw how much that actually meant to me. This is how pre-schooler Small sounds. And it is a sweet sweet sound.
Sometimes he even directs the right sound at me, his father or his sister, but he’s equally likely to direct it at his favourite toy (it’s a ladybird), the coloured glass panels on the front door or the lovely lady in Sainsbury’s who always comes over to say hello. (She’s clocked him, this too big to be sitting in a trolley boy, and she’s so lovely to him). But we don’t mind. It’s just so nice to have both my children talking to me from the backseat of the car and there are moments – when Big can no longer be distracted from talking about the intricacies of Minecraft – that they make as much sense as each other :-). But it’s how it should be. Both children making themselves heard.
Last week, in a bid to add more process to our lives, Big suggested that every time Small made a sound we should give him a toy, to encourage more sounds (sound = toy, must make more sounds…?) I explained that current thinking was that you should mirror the sound back – so Small knows that his making a sound encourages you to make a sound, so you are concentrating on and encouraging him.
And she did.
And then Small knocked on the car window and so did Big and then Small kicked his feet on the car seat and so did Big and all of a suddenly there were my children… Interacting and giggling. Just like I’d always hoped they would, but had never been sure they could.
There’s that normal again.
Oh yay, swimming again! No Mummy, it’s not too cold!!
itssmallsworld 