Max a Chat

Max is a talker. Yesterday, at the Phoenix Zoo, he asked, “What did I talk about when I was three months old.”

I told him, “you weren’t talking yet, but a few months later, you started talking and you never quit.”

Erik said, “You wake up in the morning chatting and you don’t stop til bedtime. Sometimes, you fall asleep in the middle of the sentence.”

None of which he heard because he had already moved on, talking about the different ways his rock could fly up in the air and down in the air. “It’s an organized rock.”

Today, when I was working at home and he was flying his Star Wars jetfighter around and I asked him “Maxi, do you want a sandwich?”

He said, “You need to stop mean at me.”

“What did I do mean?”

“You talked to me while I was talking to you and you called me Maxi and I don’t like that because I was talking and you are mean at me.”

“What should I call you? Maxintosh? Maxallot? Maxalovebutt?”

“Max. Max is fine. And no talking.”

Yesterday, his grandma asked to take a picture. “Yes, you can take a picture of me. But just the back of my head. “

Upon finding Zoe and Max staring hard at the Walking Dead when the DVR reverted to the channel, AMC, I started running around the room, trying to turn the TV off, asking, why are you watching zombies? Max says, “WE WATCH ZOMBIES BECAUSE YOU WATCH ZOMBIES.” Parenting 101 reminder.

We went to Phoenix for the weekend, stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn. A fine hotel but nothing to write home about. Max says, “I want to go back to the hotel. Why did we leave? Someone will steal our spot.”

This morning, before sandwich, after cereal, during my English Muffin.

“Can I have some French Toast.”

“I don’t have any French Toast. This is an English Muffin.”

“I like French Toast. But English Toast is OK. Bring it to me in the TV Room. That’d be great.”

I spend most of my life looking for Lego Parts. It is a line on my CV. I’m pretty good at it. Today, I gave him a flashlight and said I had too much work and it’s too hard to find the tiny guys and their heads and legs and single Lego pieces.  I told him he had to look. He found the Star Wars guy’s Helmet under the couch. “Miss Mommy. Miss Mommy. I found it. It was SO easy. Why you think it’s so hard?”

“Do you want to watch George and the giant thumb?”

“What is that, fee fie foe? No. Let’s watch the one about maple syrup. That’d be great.”

After I asked him if he liked being a monkey: “Yes. I haven’t seen giraffes in a long time.”

Max talks in all caps a lot. There is little he has no opinion about. He has been talking for three years straight. Now that he’s four, he sometimes lets me or Erik or Zoe get a word in edgewise. Sometimes not. Sometimes, if anyone else tries to talk, he says, “but I was talking.” And we say, “No kidding.” But he doesn’t hear us because he’s already talking about something else.

My ears have been filled with the sounds of Max for four years now. When he’s not here or he’s asleep, the silence is deep. If he’s taking a nap, sometimes I want to go and wake him up. We could chat about Transformers and why they’re not always cars or Star Wars and why they wear helmets or giraffes and how tall tall tall tall tall they are. Or I could get some work done.

Oh wait. Never mind. Here he is.

“We can talk about the nap later. Let’s play this book again.”

He’s in his room, saying “tick tock tick tock. OK. Time to go.” The audience? Not always necessary but no matter how much work I have to do (semester. Begins today.) I can’t stop myself from following his voice to find out what he’s talking about, even if it’s just English Muffin expectations.
When I found him, I said, "You need to take a nap."
He said, "I can't. I'm missing you."
And that is how four year olds nap. By talking the whole time.