talking

i get more excited than i probably should when maggie talks.

i know this.

it just surprises me. it takes me off guard every time.

like this morning....

me: "let's go get waffles!"

maggie: "fafa"

me: "did you just say waffle??"

maggie: (pointing this time) "fafa"

me: i need to get this on video! where is my camera!? she learned another word! i need a video!

is this what life is supposed to feel like?

to be honest, it used to puzzle me when someone would be telling me a story about how their kid just whipped this word out of thin air and they have no clue where they learned it. all i could think was that doesn't really happen, does it?

for someone who slaves away through hours and hours of speech therapy to just get their kid to use the word "help" and then says meh, close enough when you hear a poorly uttered "bep", it's hard to wrap your head around things like that.

but here's the thing.

apparently, it is normal for kids to learn words on their own.

you know. without like five hundred hours of therapy.

and without me having to repeat the word until it starts to sound weird in my head.

and now i keep calling up my mom and mike and everyone i know and telling them stories about how maggie just whipped a word up out of thin air.

they are probably getting sick of me.

i mean, the other day i caught maggie saying "ball" for the first time and i texted this video to everyone i knew with a caption that read "she learned a new word" and an infinite number of exclamation points.

i cried the other day when i asked maggie to go get shoes and she came back with a mismatched pair in tow. "that's right! you found your shoes!!"
now can you teach your brother how to do that?

sometimes it breaks my heart that the gap between my kids is slowly closing in.

i'm starting to see that there might be a day in the near future where maggie passes her brother up in terms of speech capabilities.

but a lot of times, i almost feel lucky that tennyson is so delayed.

i don't think a lot of parents get the same joy out of talking that i do.

it's just something that happens to their kids, you know. the same way i feel about walking and crawling or getting a new tooth.

it's exciting, and it's fun, but it is also just something that happens.

when my kids learn a new word, i feel pure elation. i feel like dancing and jumping and shouting it out to the whole world.

it is a victory to me.

tennyson has taught me that. he has given me such a fine appreciation for these things. and for that, i'm extremely grateful.

so this is my post about talking.
i know that i'm so excited about it that i could probably make new a post every day. complete with video.
but that's probably overkill, so i'll try not to. though i'm not making any promises.