Irony

Claire is saying new words just about every day. She makes her wet sound for Jesus, she roars like a lion, and she makes an f sound for the sound that a dog makes, (because I say ruff, ruff). Some of our favorite words that she says are turtle and lasagna. The more she talks, she more she can communicate with us. That's fun.


But as she's getting more independent-minded, and because her repertoire of words is still small in the grand view of our language, she sometimes, (and today it's been quite frequently), resorts to her two ways of trying to get what she wants, even though she can't say it.

One way that she lets us know she needs/wants something is to whimper. That's okay when she does it once or twice to get my attention. Just today I was able to pick up her doll when it had fallen beyond her reach - all because she let me know - through a whimper - that she needed help.

The other way she lets me know she needs/wants something is to say, "ma ma, ma ma, ma ma, ma ma, ma ma, ma ma, ma ma, ma ma, ma ma...." (And believe me - I could go on!) That gets old really quickly. She frequently says this when I'm in the middle of doing something, and I can't give her my full attention. I might ask her to play with her toys, to look at a book, or to do something else, but she doesn't always fall for my distraction tactic.

So that sets the scene for you. This morning Claire and I went to the store. I usually like going to the store because I get out of the house, and I don't feel badly about buying the food we need. I don't go to the mall or go to Target just to browse very often because I would probably want to buy things, but I don't want to buy things because I don't feel that I should spend money on them right now. They are not needs. But I'm okay with going to the grocery store.

When hearing that some of my friends really don't like going grocery shopping with their kids, I've just thought, "Claire does just fine at the store, so I don't mind at all." I guess we just haven't reached that stage yet.

But this morning was a breakthrough -- in a bad sort of way, I'm afraid. Claire drove me crazy basically the entire time we were at the store! If she wasn't whimpering because she wanted something, then she was saying "ma ma" incessantly because she wanted something. And if she wasn't saying "ma ma" over and over, then she was whimpering! I gave her plenty of items to play with. She loved the package of wipes with a dog on the packaging, (she went a little crazy over it, actually), but she also wanted the bread and the bananas and the hot dogs that she gnawed her way into. I gave her the box of red beans and rice, but she also wanted the blueberries and the can of refried beans and the eyeliner that she had already dropped a few times before. {I could continue giving examples, but I think you get the idea!} The pattern continued throughout our shopping trip: I gave her something she actually could play with, she played with it for a little while, but she also wanted all sorts of other things she couldn't play with!

And to add on to all of that, we were in the check-out line for at least 25 minutes. AAAAAAHHH!! Enough is enough!

But now Claire is peacefully taking a nap. And so I'm not hearing her say any words, cute or repetitively bothersome, at the moment. But I guess that's the irony, the two-edged sword of Claire learning to speak. Sometimes it's cute, and sometimes it's not. Oh well. At least it's nap time.