"Be careful what you wish for"

How many times have we young parents heard that?

Everyone warns that you are dying for your baby to walk but that once she is mobile, you wonder why you were in a hurry to chase down an ambulatory little one. Eager as we were for Edith to take those independent first steps, I could imagine that these people had a point.

I had a harder time imagining that I'd agree with the same warnings about talking, though. You're dying for her to say your name, folks cautioned, and then you'll be sorry she ever learned it. That sounded a bit too cynical for sunny me (not to mention talkative me). Who wouldn't warm to her child's voice calling, "Mama"? Who wouldn't thrill to the funny little questions from a brain sorting out the world for the first time? Noting that many of the parents making this observation had kids in college, I suspected that they were speaking from a post-adolescence vantage point, thinking of the sarcasm they got from their sixteen year olds rather than the sweet appeals from their two year olds. If we ever regretted that Edith could talk, I thought, we had at least a decade or more until that day.

I need to take parenting advice more seriously.

Edith is newly stringing together sentences, but true to form, is still bent on engaging a participatory audience at all times. The result can be overwhelming. For the first time this week she uttered that childhood classic,

"Mommy, watch!"

Followed shortly thereafter by, "Watch, Mommy! Mommy, watch! Mommy, watch! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" We are now quite familiar with this phrase. In fact, Tom and I were listening for any sentence this evening that didn't start with either "Mommy" or "Daddy."

"Mommy, sit down right here!" is a favorite. "Mommy, do this!" and "Mommy help Edith!" are both in the running for a prize, too. But there are even the simple observations: "Mommy, Edith eating bread!" or "Mommy, Edith running fast!" or "Night night, Purple Beah. Mommy, Purple Beah night night!"

Or in her fastidious mode, "Mommy wearing Daddy's 'weater. Off, Mommy! Mommmy, off 'weater! Daddy's 'weater!" (I've heard this one frequently during the frigid weather this week, as Tom owns both of the two big wool sweaters in the house.) But I don't need to be wearing anyone else's clothes to hear "Mommy, coat off! Edith drink Mommy's mehk! Coat off, Mommy!"

There are other erstwhile wishes I'm reconsidering. I wanted Edith to love reading, and I wanted her to get to the point where picture books with a narrative appealed to her. But I confess her enthusiasm is outstripping mine. "Wead, Mommy! Wead, Mommy! 'Gain! One more! Just one! Wead, Daddy! 'Gain! Wead, Daddy! Daddy, wead! One! Just one!"

I was delighted with her appreciation for recorded music. It continues to make her willing to go to bed on her own. But it also has encouraged her to undertake a morning music appreciation class, too. Friday at 5am, nothing would do but for Mommy to sit with Edith in the rocking chair and listen to Glee Club recordings, while Edith pointed out any drum parts or parts where she thought she heard "Mommy ninging."

Can you tell it has been a tiring weekend?

So let me include a much sweeter instance of Edith's speech. Recently we've been making our prayers very simple, both at the table and at night, saying thanks for various immediate and obvious things around us. Edith folds her hands, but I didn't know how much she understood of what it was about. But the last half dozen times or so, we've been in the middle of naming things and she has reminded us, "Bismarck."

The night before we left for Iowa last month we took Bismarck to a kennel, the first time we've had to kennel him since getting married. It was a last-minute arrangement: A neighbor girl was going to look in on him twice a day for us, but when we got home from school that evening we discovered he had pooped all over Edith's room, the second time he'd done such a thing in a week. The first time we'd thought he was sick, but this time we started to suspect he was angry at us for something. Whatever the cause, we couldn't leave him home alone for four days, leaving a ten year old potentially to deal with another such mess. So we rushed around to find a kennel, get him in, take him over there...then clean Edith's floormat tile by stinking tile, while keeping her occupied and out of the way.

All of which was to say that I was more than a little irritated with Bismarck that evening. I was even wondering whether we had what it takes to make a happy home for a dog at this stage in our lives.

Before bed Edith wanted to know where Bismarck was. We explained that he had gone on vacation, but that we would see him again when we got home from Iowa. I didn't think anything more about it until we were curled up in the rocking chair nursing before bed. I was telling her good night, and that I loved her, a ritual usually met with contented silence. But that night Edith popped off and called into the darkness, "Night night, Bismarck! Love you."

It doesn't quite balance 17 daily readings of Corduroy. But it's close.