“I think I slept on my feet weird, they hurt this morning.” Olivia muttered these words as she sprawled at my feet while I tried to get ready for work.
I silently wondered if she’d slept hunched over in some weird crisscross-applesauce position because if not, how in the world did she sleep on her FEET weird.
But I decided not to ask that question out loud because I was afraid she’d actually try to answer.
This is the child we were told might not ever speak. Okay, wait. No, we personally never heard that Olivia might not speak. But research I did before we got her diagnosis told us that if she had 5p- syndrome, she wouldn’t talk or walk. Her doctor, the one who diagnosed her, told us to ignore that research.
This girl, the one who was not supposed to be able to talk, she never shuts up. She talks from the moment she wakes up until she’s finally asleep at night. She talks to me as she’s falling asleep, mumbling about what she’s planning to dream about or asking me if I’m mad at her.
The mad thing is our newest routine (Olivia LOVES routines.) I tell her, gently mind you, to settle and she’ll give a small smile say, “I’m trying. Are you mad at me?”
And my answer is always, “No, of course I’m not mad at you. Nobody is mad at you. Everybody loves you. I love you, Daddy loves you, Lyssie loves you. Gram loves you, Pawp loves you, Jaxon loves you, the little monster loves you. And Orville loves you even though you run away from him.”
While this doesn’t actually make her settle so much as it makes her giggle, she needs me to say it all because like I said, routine is her friend.
Olivia’s imagination is like probably every other eight year olds out there. She’s got so much going on in her head and she needs to get it out. She needs to talk and be heard but yikes, sometimes…the talking just seems to go on forever. I love it, really I do, but when she finally does settle for the night, I admit to being quite relieved as I bask in the silence that lasts all of thirty seconds before Alyssa realizes that Olivia has stopped talking and decides it’s her turn to be heard.
Yes, I’m pretty darned lucky to live in a chatty household. I remind myself of that every single day.
A mom, a dad and two daughters. We're living ordinary lives with a twist of 5p- (Cri du Chat) for spice. But we're about so much more than our younger daughter's genetic diagnosis.
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