Saturday, July 27, 2013

Huh??

There is no such thing as volume control in my house.  My children produce sound at two levels: ear-splitting and earth shattering, and there are NO mute buttons.  You want silence around here?  Check things out between 3:10-3:24 a.m.  (But no guarantees.)

The thing is, noise level isn’t necessarily a crisis indicator.  That’s just the way my kids communicate.

Need a snack?

MOM, I’M HUNGRY!!!

See some furry critter in the backyard?

LOOK AT THE BUNNY!!!”

Sibling walks within twelve feet of your personal space?

GET OUT OF MY WAY, YOU STINKY BABY!!!”

And my personal favorite:

BE QUIET, MOMMY IS TRYING TO SLEEP!” 

It doesn’t take a keen observer to realize that all the shouting is a product of genetics.  Just listen to their father.  You’ll usually hear variations of a few different themes, including “TURN OFF THE LIGHTS IN THE [KITCHEN, BATHROOM, BEDROOM, GARAGE]!!!”, “CLOSE THE [FRONT, BACK, GARAGE, CAR] DOOR!!!”, and “STOP HITTING YOUR [SISTER, BROTHER, FRIEND]!!!”  And my personal favorite:

BE QUIET, MOMMY IS TRYING TO SLEEP!”

The best is when Tyler and the children come together in one, ear-drum rupturing cacophony of noise.  Around here, we call it “Wrestling with Dad.”  Are they having fun? Is he killing them?  It’s hard to tell when he’s got four screaming children pinned to the floor in a combination of Krav Maga / jujitsu moves he learned from watching Saturday night UFC fights.  But since the kids always come back for more, I figure the screams are all happy ones.

Personally, I’ve learned to deal with the noise by slowly going deafer with each pregnancy.  No, really.  At first, I assumed that I inherited my progressive hearing loss from my father, a retired airline captain.  But it turns out he can’t hear anything thanks to decades of being around loud jets.  I just had four children. 

I like to think of it as God’ protection over me.  And them.

In the midst of my own noise complaints, I recently discovered that while I think my children are exceptionally loud, they think I’m pretty loud, too.  Perhaps it’s because I can’t hear my own voice anymore.  Or perhaps I made one or two genetic contributions of my own.  But it turns out that they can be equally as intolerant of my noise as I am of theirs.

Last night, in the midst of bedtime chaos, I decided to try and move a piece of furniture around downstairs.  After it crashed to floor, Ella shouted at me from her bedroom, “MOM, TRY TO BE QUIET!!  YOU SCARED THE SHEEP OUT OF ME!!!”

Wait.  What??

Fortunately, my unreliable ears were not playing tricks on me.  She really did say “sheep.” 

I still have yet to determine where exactly she heard the phrase that she so obviously misinterpreted.  I'm just glad she didn't hear it correctly.  Maybe all the noise around here can work in my favor.  Once in awhile.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

My kids don't hear me either, I feel like I'm the invisible woman talking to myself most of the time. Glad you're back!

Jenny said...

Glad to "hear" things are as funny as ever at your house! Selective hearing loss may be fun around here with as chatty as Miss M is these days.

For me, I'm finding that my eyesight is slowing slipping away. Fought the realization for a while (When did Verizon change the font size on their TV guide descriptions? That's annoyingly small and out of focus!?), but perhaps in my case, it's God's protection too.

Only so many times can I handle the sight of my son precariously perched high atop furniture waiting for his unsuspecting sis to walk by and be "surprise attacked".

Linda (Nina's Nest) said...

I am laughing so hard that I have tears in my eyes. What craziness! Linda