Girl’s Life

Oh silence…I can hardly remember your sweet lack of sound. Aren’t you the distant friend whose presence allowed me to sleep till whenever on a Saturday morning? Didn’t your being there almost guarantee a good night’s sleep just a month ago?

Silence really has no place in my life these days, especially not with a baby monitor merely inches away from my ears during sleeping hours. There’s no silence even sitting here at 4:30 in the morning, a wonderful time of night with which I am becoming all too familiar. It’s a time that one would normally think should be completely silent.

But not in my world. Oh no.

Even at this peaceful hour, all around me I hear noise. The white noise blaring from the computer in Sophie’s room. Sophie’s grunts and moans as she nurses. Even the dog has gotten in on the fun of nightly noisemaking and has taken to scaring me half to death with barking as I creep out of the nursery in the pitch dark. Poor Chris was practically flattened last night as I hurled myself half way across the hallway without touching the ground to safety beneath my comforter! Doesn’t my dog know how extremely jumpy lack of sleep can make a person? Do dogs have a sense of humor?

But Sophie’s noises are not just limited to nighttime. She is becoming quite a “talker” - grunting through just about every activity of her day. Playing? “Aaarrrhh! Eeerrr!” Sleeping? “aaaaahhh….hrmph….rrrrrmmmm.” Staring at herself in her baby mirror? “eeeeeee aaaoooohhh!” And definitely eating. “haaahhhh, uh, uh, haaaahhhh”. She sounds like a little dinosoar. A little babydactyl. In fact, that’s a little like what she looks like when coming at me - mouth wide, eyes crazed - to feed! She makes these old man guttural grunts as if to say, “Thank you for the sweet nectar of the gods you provide for me, dear mommy.” Or maybe it’s just gas.

Either way, we’re constantly laughing as Sophie continues to be the background narration to our daily activities. Who needs cable anyway?