She Has So Much to Say

Who’d have thought that our child with 5p- syndrome, a syndrome known for leaving individuals unable to speak at all, would be the biggest talker in the family?

Last night during dinner, Olivia could barely stop talking long enough to take bites of her potato soup. Since the startup of track meets (there’s been all of one, with the second one tonight) Olivia feels like she doesn’t get to talk to me enough.

So all through dinner, she told me stories about Mush Mush and Katherine and English and Chlocla and Language (those are all of O’s imaginary friends, with Mush Mush being the main character in most of the stories and the others serving as supporting characters.)

Every few sentences, I’d nod at some thrilling tidbit and remind her to eat her dinner. She’d pause in her story-telling, take a bite, chew it a couple of times, swallow and start right back up where she’d left off in her story.

At one point, Tom got up to get something and we exchanged a glance over O’s head. I think he Mush Mush stories are getting to him. He spends more time with her than I do throughout the week. He was with her all evening on Monday (and will be tonight) while I was with Lyss at the track meet. He also is the parent who is home when Liv gets off the bus at 3:15. They’re alone together until they go pick Lyss up from track practice at 4:30. When I get home at 5:00, he’s so done with O’s stories and her attitude and her sass and her bouncing and running and pounding on the table, wall, countertop.

I get it. I do. It can be really irritating but I worry that all this alone time isn’t actually good for either one of them. They’re getting on each other’s nerves.

Thankfully, next week Lyss has a home meet. Tom and Liv can come to that and I can be on Livie duty while he watches the meet.

I know that in the end, it’s good for both Tom and Livie to have to deal with each other. I can’t always be the buffer between them but…I kind of want to be just that. I feel like the both need that from me. Which is probably why they need to not have me there all that time.

Sigh.