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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Death of Me

We are all so tired right now. John has been marathon reading SOS material, even at work, and he came home and fell asleep on the couch. Conner took great advantage of his day off of school (parent-teacher conferences) and played hard outside with his friend Mitch. Thank God for a school friend within biking distance. Even Olivia seemed worn out this afternoon, all nestled under my tiredness on the couch with me in front of HGTv.

Only Sean-Peter seems unaffected. I took him for a doctor's visit this morning, just for a check-up. Which just happened to coincide with a cold and some diarrhea he's been having. Not that you'd know it based on his hyper spastics in the doctor's office as I'm trying to explain to this guy who doesn't know us why I'm concerned about my son's speech. Sean-Peter supported me readily enough by incoherently jabbering on in that muttering ventriloquist way of his, with jabs of "No!" and "Mom!" thrown in here and there to confirm that, yes, he thinks he's speaking English.

I got the referrals I wanted and corralled Sean-Peter around the hospital like a puppy dog straining at a verbal leash while I gathered prescriptions, scheduled referrals, and corrected newly found mistakes in our records. Then he had the nerve to try to fall asleep in the car five minutes before we got home, which led me to some pretty interesting spastics of my own in my effort to keep him awake so he'd still nap in the afternoon, something I was desperate to do myself.

At dinner we're all talking about our day and how tired we are. Do you think we could have carbon monoxide poisoning? Is that something they check for when you buy a house? Oh, we would all have headaches, too? Oh. Then I guess I'm just tired.

I'm telling John that Sean-Peter's going to be the death of me and how he could put that on my gravestone: "Sean-Peter Was The Death of Me". And the conversation is continuing until we could no longer tune out Sean-Peter's incoherent babblings, which steadily get louder and louder until we tell him to be quiet, then get louder and louder again, until Olivia wails because "He hit me!" or Conner interrupts with something mind-boggling off the topic or all three kids simply leave the table and we don't even care because our ears are just so glad to be ringing from the silence.

But this time John notices that there is some substance to Sean-Peter's gutterings, even actual consonants.

"Dee-dee-da-mmm-mm-mm dee-da-mm-mm-da-dee-da-deh-da MEE!" And he's repeating it over and over.

"I do believe he's saying, he's going to be the death of me." Convincing us even further that he is harboring a 5000-word vocabulary that one day will come spewing out until we think fondly of the days when we could shake our heads and plead ignorant.
Keep laughing, snot-nose. You'll miss me when I'm gone.

Then who's going to put lotion on those cute little chapped cheeks?

5 comments:

Jerilyn said...

Mama said there'd be days like this.

the dragonfly said...

Awww...

Good luck. I feel like this some days, and I only have one little boy! (Granted, the days I feel like this are usually during the Sergeant's trips to the field for training..)

Your little guy really is a cutie, though!! :)

Jolyn said...

"jerilyn", your comment immediately made me break out into song.

Anonymous said...

That face is too cute!!

judy said...

Jolyn, that was the cutest story! I just read it to Don and he's still laughing. Reminds me of the time
John H. and I took a really cute, blond, little 3 year old girl into a restaurant without her mom and we could not figure out what she wanted to eat because we couldn't understand a thing she said. We asked her all the possible things we thought she could want, hamburger, toasted cheese sandwich, french fries, etc. and she would have none of it. There was something she wanted, though, and after while of frustrated hollering (from her) John and I grabbed our food and with more than a little embarressment left with her and headed to the car, where her mother was dealing with a migrane. I can't imagine why.
The little girl turned out fine and now she's grown and writes these amazing stories on her blog!