Thursday, August 16, 2007

She's a screamer

“Are you going deaf?”

My husband seems to be asking me that a lot lately. Not so much because I can’t hear but because I apparently talk loud. I don’t do it on purpose, but that’s what happens when you have an 18-month-old who has, um, discovered her voice. You find yourself talking louder just so she can hear you.

Ladybug has always had a good set of lungs on her. When she was born, she outwailed every newborn in the hospital nursery.

“Man,” the father of another newborn said to us at the time, “she puts my guy to shame.”

Since then I’ve gotten used to our high-decibel conversations and accepted it as something that comes with having a baby. At least I thought that’s the way things operated until another pint-sized squawker put us in our place.

We were at Chuck E. Cheese playing a game when a little boy decided he wanted to play with us. Ladybug handed him the padded baton and he began banging away. Ladybug shrieked with excitement and babbled something unintelligible, and the boy dropped the baton and covered his ears.

“She talks loud, doesn’t she?” I asked.

He nodded, his hands still over his ears, a look of panic on his face.

Since then, I’ve tried to remind Ladybug that we don’t need to scream when we talk. I’ll say, “Ladybug, use your quiet voice” or “No screaming, please. I can hear you.”

My success rate is hit or miss. But she must be getting the point because she’s picked up a new habit: Walking around with her hands over her ears.

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