It seems in the past month or so that Lauren (yes, I said Lauren, not Ryan) NEVER stops talking! I guess we should be happy about this considering just last year, she would barely speak because no one could understand her - my how things have changed! The talking isn't actually the problem, it is when (which is always), she decides to talk, that is. If anyone within ear shot of her is speaking, she speaks. And she'll talk about anything . . . food, other kids, the weather - anything to be heard. Trav and I have actually started to tell her that she can't talk for certain periods of time. Example . . . we are all sitting at the table eating when Ryan starts to share a story about school. The minute noise comes out of his mouth, Lauren will interrupt and say, "I have a funny joke" or, "1 and 2 makes 3" - like I said, she'll talk about anything. The other night I even went as far as setting the timer on the microwave for five minutes. I told her she couldn't speak another word until the timer went off (seems simple enough). But because Lauren clearly isn't capable of not speaking, she sat there and raised her hand five hundred times and had to . . . go to the bathroom to toot (the "no tooting at the table" rule was great initially, but now the kids just seem to use it as an excuse to dink around during mealtime), get a napkin, ask for more milk- anything to eat up her five minutes, clearly my plan did not work. Aside from the mealtime madness, Lauren's other perfect opportunity to never stop talking usually occurs in the van. The minute I strap everyone in and close the doors, her mouth starts going. I've learned to sort of "zone her out", but Trav, not so much. Any constant talking for more than five minutes just drives him crazy so the "no talking" rule usually goes into effect when Daddy is in the van. Whether or not it works . . . let's just say the percentages aren't great.
The one upside to all of her chatting . . . she has been saying some pretty funny stuff lately. My favorite is, "Mom, we is besties" (meaning the two of us are the best of friends - this could or could not be true depending on the day). "I is so stinkin' coot (her version of cute), or "you is so stinkin' coot." The other day when Colton was obviously working on a poo, she takes one look at his bright red face and says to me, "Mom, Colt is taking a big . . . (long pause while she searches for the right word) dump" (another word she might have picked up from Mom or Dad - oops). The other day we were outside enjoying the gorgeous day and she says, "Mom, this is amazin'" (any word ending in "g" - she usually just leaves it off) when referring to the weather. And because she still has trouble saying her words that contain the letter "r", I usually try to make she say a bunch (partly because she needs to work on it, and partly because I love how she says it) of them. She always asks where Trav is during the day, and I always tell her he is working. So the rest of the day she'll say, ""Dad is at wayk" - she drops the r and strecthes the word out. Or just because I wanted to see if she could pull off being a "Jersey girl", I had her say, "I am from Jersey." Her version came out . . . "I is fom Jezzy" which means she just might be able to be from Jersey after all!
Oh, and one last thing about our precious little girl. Today while waiting for her bus, she got a little excited and ran into the street when the bus pulled up. When the bus driver opened the door, she told Lauren that she had to wait in the driveway until the bus was stopped and the doors were opened to make sure she didn't get hit. Lauren's response . . . she started to cry and told the bus driver, "you is not my friend!" After hearing this, the bus driver said sorry, and then went on to tell Lauren that she just wanted her to be safe and that is why she had to follow the rules. Lauren came back with, "You didn't hit me, I is the boss." Hearing all of this and knowing things were going nowhere fast, I stepped onto the bus (usually parents don't get on at all, the driver handles everything) and talked to Lauren. By now she was in full "meltdown" mode so I either had to put an end to things, or take her off the bus. Having gone through all my tricks and not having the outcome I was looking for, I had to dig deep to find something that would make everything okay. And guess what the something was . . . the dog. I picked up Scrappy and made him wave at Lauren and the other kids on the bus, and just like that, things were good (guess that means the dog just earned himself another 6 months with us!). After that little fiasco, I wasn't so sure how speech school would go so I stayed close to the phone just in case Lauren's teacher needed to get a hold of me. And wouldn't know it, at 10:02am (class is over at 10:00), the phone rang. It was Ms.Beth and she just wanted to touch base with me regarding Lauren's day. Turns out Lauren started crying again on the bus so when she arrived at school, things weren't going so good. Ms. Beth had to convince her to get off the bus, and once she did, Lauren said she'd go to school one more day, but that it would be her last (seriously?). So Ms. Beth got her into class and just like other days, she had a blast. But then it was time to get back on the bus and head home - bring on the tears! I guess as they were getting their backpacks on, Lauren again told Ms. Beth that today was her last day (through tears of course). Ms. Beth, being the smart lady she is, told Lauren that if she never came back, she wouldn't get to finish her giraffe project they had just started. This was enough to make Lauren reconsider, and she agreed to come back one more day, but then never again. So there you have it, Lauren is (after she finishes her project on Thursday of course) going to be an official "speech school" dropout!
