A Day in the Life of My Ears

I love my boys. Really, really I love my boys. But here's the thing: to put a positive spin on it, they're "highly verbal". They talk. A LOT. As in incessant-stream-of-consciousness verbalization. It's like having your life narrated.

In fact, I will hear them talk exactly like a narration when they are playing some of their games. Example... I overheard Tate and Wyatt in the family room, acting out some scene with their Legos, and it went like this:
Tate's voice " 'Where are you going?' Indy asked."
Wyatt's voice " 'To the Lost Temple of the Golden Banana.' he answered."

Mostly they say reasonable, sensible things - things that make sense, and relate to our lives. Sometimes they say funny things. Usually NOT when they're trying to be funny. Like Gunnar calling his groin his "growin' " (as in, "He kicked me in the growin'!").

But what really makes my eyes glaze over is their descriptions of movies or activities that are "huge" to them, but next to meaningless to me. Oh, I listen. I try to be attentive. I try to understand the coherence of what they are describing, but sometimes it eludes me.

Gunnar came in to my office, while I was checking my email, to give me a description of a game they were playing. This is about the last TENTH of it:


Ok, where do you want me to start? (And by start, he meant start a new section, not as you might assume, from the beginning!)

The Polar Bear is the main criminal. He didn’t like the cold weather and wanted to go to Hawaii or something like that, but he went to the North Pole instead by accident.

And then he met the crab, which is his friend. And the mission that Wyatt is going to do is about the machine that makes earthquakes.

Now, that’s good.

AND get this mommy. No, don’t write this down… well, it’s like there’s a …. there’s this big machine which the polar bear rides in and then a little go-cart for the crab and he has a lantern.

Ok look mommy, I got a question, I would like a little snack.

Um, the crab … I don’t know really… he just popped up once and then he keeps appearing.

Okay, I got the bit about the snack - it was time for lunch - but the rest of it (and, trust me, there was a lot more) was all kind of unclear.