Shhhhh. Just...shhhhh.

Every other child in this area, and apparently on God's green earth, has started school already. Every child, except for Henry. And, presumably, Henry's schoolmates. Henry's school starts tomorrow.

We have spent two full weeks together. The first week was jam-packed with fun as his many friends were also out of school, and there was much merriment and pool-going and beach adventures and etc. But now all his friends are in school, and Henry has turned to me for companionship. And boy howdy, I love my kid, but he talks ALL THE TIME. He narrates everything he's doing. Everything. I often delight in his extensive vocabulary and the stuff he comes up with is often so clever and adorable I'm weak with love, but then he keeps talking and talking and talking and whoops I just jammed a fork into my ears. If he can't think of something to say he launches into a stream of nonsense words. I admit that I can get pretty voluble when I'm in the mood, but when I have nothing to say I don't shout BOOP BEE BOOP while throwing myself to the ground and slapping my head.

Okay, sometimes I do that.

As I was typing the above Henry joined me at the dining room table. He can spend only a few minutes playing by himself until the need to share his ongoing adventures overcomes him. Here, verbatim, as it pours from his mouth—or as I call it, his sound-hole—is an excerpt from Henry's narrative as he shoves a Transformer under my nose: "It has a magic glider with a horse, and a shirt and that shirt is magic. And it also has robotical powers for him. Is that cool sounding? Is that cool sounding? Isn't that cool sounding?"

Yes, son. It's cool sounding.

Adding insult to emotional injury, this new school of his features a ridiculous, painfully drawn-out phase-in. I can appreciate the thinking behind the phase-in, but they haven't taken into account that I AM LOSING MY MIND. The first day is thirty minutes. THIRTY. I will drop him off, head home, open the door, close the door, and head right back. Or I will sit in my car and chew gum. I will bet that my gum will not have lost its flavor by the time school's done. The second day? 45 minutes. Maybe I'll have to move on to a second stick of gum by then. Maybe I'll choose a different flavor, mix things up a little. Wheee! The days continue like that until Friday, when he stays for enough time that I could possibly run home to write an email and toast a waffle. If I eat the waffle while composing the email I might be able to pee before heading back out! Jubilee!

"Know where these two people went? Do you know? Do you know, Mama? The guy went into his own mind with one of his friends. He went into his own mind. The robot went into his own mind. He went into his own mind with one of his friends. SHHHHOOOOOOOOoooooooooooop."

So in other words, school doesn't actually begin until next week. School, by the way, being pre-school, because I was stupid enough to birth my child on October 7th, when the cut-off date for kindergarten in New Jersey is October 1st; no, they won't put him into kindergarten, there are no exceptions, yes, I CHECKED. And frankly I'm not too broken up about him spending an extra year in preschool. He's probably ready in-tee-lek-shully for kindergarten but physically he's a teeny bit behind, and every year he's been the youngest in his class and has literally been unable to catch up to his classmates as they race circles around him. (Of course the fact that he wants to stop and comment on everything doesn't help him move any faster. Here's Henry at the playground: "Wow, you sure can climb those monkey bars! I would climb them but I don't know how and anyway I don’t really want to learn. But you're doing great! You're almost at the end now! And hey, now you're running and you run really fast! I'm going to run too! Hey, wait up! I'm following you!")

Also, the public school kindergarten here is a half-day. It ends at 11:30. That is too early. So even though we can't eat because of all the money we're paying for preschool, at least he's there until 3 p.m. Of course not this week.

"Look at this guy, I tied him up pretty good. I tied him up with a special magic rope. He's a cryto-robber. Look at this guy, see? Are you looking? Look at this guy, look how I tied him up? Do you see it? Look. Look! Look at how I tied him up? Are you looking?"

I may have raised my voice a teeny bit with that last one. YES I SEE HIM GREAT WHATEVER. I'm losing it. I just gave him three Fig Newtons, because at least then he'll be quiet. Right? Wrong.

"I turned my Fig Newton into a boot. I bited it and it looks like a boot. See? Now I'm eating the boot. Now it's a car. See? See? Now I'm eating it. Now it's the wind. Because I ate it all? See? See how it's the wind? See?"

Dear school: please start. Thank you. Love, Alice.

P.S.: Hey, look: a Wonderland post from last week! Do you see? Look! Look! Look! Look! See? Do you see? Look!

Comments

[Michelle]

Wow it's like spending 5 minutes with my 5 year-old stepdaughter.1) she repeats everything she says until she gets the response she desires, which apparently is me screaming "I HEARD YOU THE FIRST 87 TIMES! I KNOW YOU WANT ICE CREAM! THAT'S WHY I GAVE YOU ICE CREAM!!!!!!!!!"2) she just sort of... makes things up. "see, I forgot to wash my hands because I am a forgeter and I forget to do things because I don't need to wash my hands, because they don't get dirty this isn't dirt..."3) she narrates everything like this: "we're walking right? to the store right? we're going to buy groceries, right? we need to buy milk, right? and we're walking on the sidewalk, right? because the road is dangerous, right? and cars could hit you right? then we couldn't buy groceries, right? ......" for eternity. GGGGAAAAHHHHH!!!!!

[Audrey - Pinks & Blues]

This post is hilarious!

For all us moms (yes, me included) of kids around this age... I can totally appreciate this post.

The narratives of everything. That is my William to a T!

Last night we were going through this... and I was blogging. I know I should have been paying attention... but - OK, I was reading some of my celebrity blogs!

All of a sudden I hear him belt out the word "PENIS"!

Yes, he got my attention.

And he knew he would with that one. After all, he was playing with Thomas Train and I don't think Thomas has anatomy YET!

- Audrey

[Anne]

This post gave me a good laugh, especially since I spent a day just like this with my 4 year old yesterday. I drove him and his brother around in the car for an hour so they would fall asleep and stop talking - works better than Fig Newtons.

[Helen]

Be careful before you heed all the 'have more kids' advice...I got myself 6, 3 of them are like Henry, they still all need to tell ME every detail, sometimes at the same time, each one trying to be louder than the others and none of them making a jot of sense because suddenly, what they say is no longer important but how loud they can say it is. Dear Lord. They start full time school here at 4 1/2. I love England, also they only get 6 weeks for summer break, Great Britain indeed.

[DM]

I am so sorry but I am laughing so very hard because you have just described me. And I now understand why my roommate is wont to yell "Would you shut up already?" at various intervals. Or "Dana. Play the alphabet game (the alphabet game, in case you are not aware, is when you look at road signs and license plates for the various letters of the alphabet. It keeps you busy. Normally you would play with someone else but she's all "I have to drive. I can't look for a Q right now." Or "I don't care that there's a bird! That's the 453rd bird you've pointed out! ARGH!").

And I'm 40. Something tells me you're in for a lot of chatting.

[wendy]

See, that's why I had 2 close in age. And why I liked having friends over. At some point I needed more people to be with because there seemed to be less stuff bombarding my ears if there were 4 ears to divy it up between instead of just my 2.

[Joy of course]

This is just hillarious. I am giggling so hard over here. Wonderful, funny, post.

Good luck.

[Julie]

Alice, I never laugh out loud at posts. Never. Never never never. It's like I lack the "laughing out loud at something in print" gene or something. But holy crap I was laughing so hard at this post that I had to send a link to my husband who needed to know "What's going on over there? Seriously? What's going on?"

On a side note: as a mother to a 3-month-old, I have BECOME the narrator -- "Let's get your bib on you. Yup, that's your bib. What a cute bib, huh? No, bibs isn't for eating. Get the bib out of your mouth, honey. I've got a bottle right here. See? Here's your bottle. Now move those hands." Maybe I should put the kibosh on that now before he picks up my bad habit?

[alice]

Thank you, Julie! Also, YES. STOP TALKING NOW.

[Angela]

I have the exact same kid in my house. I love him, too, but when he grabs my head to make me watch the commercial where the new Superman has GREEN eyes, I say That's just great - and he says, I know you don't really mean that. And yet, he keeps telling me.

[Deborah]

My elder daughter is 12 now, and was A Henry, and still chatters all the time--every hour she's away is 30 minutes of non-stop talk to catch me up on something I missed. My trick, discovered accidentally: have her videotape herself playing, reading, telling stories, then watch the tapes--she liked to read books aloud to circles of dollies/animals/etc. She has an audience, she plays for HOURS, she never grows out of it. Freakin' genius, that discovery. The new baby? She and I play lovingly in SILENCE for 30 minutes a day. I fear no permanent damage.

Interestingly, my husband--also a HUGE talker who likes to discuss things to the end of time and then realizes we don't have time to DO them since he just talked for so long--did something similar: he wrote scripts starring his stuffed bear, drew "sets" on paper with crayon, then had his dad come in and tape the whole thing on the video camera while the pre-recorded dialogue played on a cassette player so his hands would be free to move the fishing line tied to the dolly parts (the tapes are hysterical, and God bless his mother, she saved EVERY ONE). Same idea for our daughter, a little less over-the-top-OCD. My money's on Henry going the sets-and-prerecorded-dialogue route, maybe some musical numbers thrown in. With choreography. He's that kind of kid, no?

[Lisa]

Yes, I also have the constant narrator, but he is 7, so in addition to the running commentary on every single idea he has for play, we also get to hear him read aloud from the backseat: the complete works of Garfield the cat. I try to explain the concept of "visual humor" - falls on deaf ears. Gah.

[alice]

Deborah, I LOVE that idea, You have inspired me.

[crabmommy]

PHASE-IN??? Crikey! You can't be serious! That's just absurd. Like you I decided to produce my tot just after the cut-off -- September 26 to be exact. Thank God her preschool doesn't have any sort of phase in. I would die if I had to phase her in. 8 hours seems like 45 mins. I think it might be worse if she were a boy, though. All that stuff about the magic robot Transformer might make me slit my wrists. At least during our at-home days we can talk about Hello Kitty and the vegetable sunglasses she made and the red heart-shaped fruit she finds on her most excellent and bizarre DVD "Hello Kitty in Stump Village" with which I'm obsessed in case anyone hasn't noticed...

[Meagan]

Freaking hilarious!

[Kathy Gillen/ lessons from the]

I hated the phase in! But now, with no one in preschool, I have just the opposite. They phase in all these afterschool activities. So instead of your kid coming home after school, you constantly have to drive to the school to pick them up. No winning.

[texasgurl]

hey, look, this is really weird, but, I think you stole my kid. seriously. we've got, not only the constant narration of incredibly indescribably inane conversations between rubberbands and paperclips and bits of food he finds on the floor--but also, the "phase-in" at nursery school. god help me, I love my son, but mr. rubberband and his posse I can do without.

[Ellen]

My daughter used to be that chatty. I would tell her my ears were tired and she had to stop talking for a while to give them a rest. "A piece of quiet" is what she called it. (and it worked--once or twice every day, I had about 5 minutes of total silence.) And when she finally went to school, during the teacher conferences EVERY YEAR I heard: She is such a delightful child, but she TALKS SO MUCH.What a surprise.

[zoom!]

A boyfriend dumped me once because my five-year-old son talked non-stop for the entire month we were together. My son's mouth was the first thing to open in the morning and the last thing to close in the evening (long after his eyes). He even talked in his sleep. He was like a radio - no dead air. And his conversation was peppered with rhetorical questions that required no answers but some acknowledgement.

He's 25 now, and - weirdly - the strong silent type.

[zoom!]

A boyfriend dumped me once because my five-year-old son talked non-stop for the entire month we were together. My son's mouth was the first thing to open in the morning and the last thing to close in the evening (long after his eyes). He even talked in his sleep. He was like a radio - no dead air. And his conversation was peppered with rhetorical questions that required no answers but some acknowledgement.

He's 25 now, and - weirdly - the strong silent type.

[Sue]

Oh, man, I love you. But, um, not in a creepy way.

[Fairly Odd Mother]

My oldest is just like this. OMG, the talking. I told her that she was channeling my dead grandmother who also talked that much (note to self: do NOT tell your child they are channeling a dead person unless you want to spend the next two hours talking this over with a sobbing child).

She also is schooled at home (no break!), but siblings have saved me. At least they can buffer some of the chatter. The funny thing is that my 3rd child hardly speaks at all, at 3. So, they kind of balance each other out!

[Chantelle]

OMG!! you just described my three and a half year old daughter. giving her food doesnt work either because she tells me after every bite that it looks like something new. yes honey, yes honey i see, all day long. i loved your post. i so.. related to it.