Oyez, oyez

Allison Clare has developed a little verbal habit that is very cute but gives me a pang each time. I'll be slicing up food for her snack or putting away laundry or changing Gillian's diaper, and she'll be chattering away in a stream like, "Here's kitty cat. Here, kitty cat, here's a cookie--for yoooouuu! Where baby? There she is! Oh, baby wear purple socks. Like Munchkin. Where princess? Princess! Princess!? Donkey!? Shrek is sleeping. Blanket on, covered up. Wake up. Like Elmo! Go beach." But somewhere in there, she'll ask in this very sweet, curious little voice with an upturned face and a smile, "Hear me, Mommy?" and I will realize that at some point in her little monologue, she has addressed me. Maybe I was offered a "cookie" (any flat circle or crescent-shaped object, sometimes a CD or maybe an apple slice) or asked a direct question, but I was lost in my own thoughts or daydreams or just in the task at hand and I didn't hear her at first.

It would make me sad to interpret this pattern as my tuning her out, but I don't really think that's what I'm doing--at least, I hope not. Somehow the sounds associated with having a toddler register with me, but not until a few seconds after they happen, as if they must pass through a filter first, and the filter searches for sound particles that should register as alarming, prioritizes those sounds for instant response, and decodes the rest more slowly. This is what enables me to sleep through the nights even though she cries out in her sleep--that I don't wake up fully until her cries have lasted for a minute or so. After a several seconds or a minute or so, I wake up instantly and am completely functional, but before that, the poor little girl is on her own. Yikes. No wonder she has learned to interject, "Hear me, Mommy?"

Sam, who has never spaced out once in the whole time I have known him, says she has never once had to ask him if he has heard her.