Yes, But...

We ran into one of DD's teachers at Target yesterday. I was paying for the cart o' stuff that's so easy to accumulate under the red bull's eye, and DD suddenly shrieked "There's Mrs. X!!" The three of us chatted for a moment and then went our separate ways.

Mrs. X, though, went back to school and told the other teachers that she'd run into my little girl. "Actually," she said, "I heard her more than saw her."

This prompted the school music teacher to ask if the other teachers thought DD needed a hearing test. Because she's constantly yelling in class, even if the object of her attention is right next to her.

Her regular teacher thought that was hilarious. "There is nothing wrong with that child's ears," she said, conveying the story to me today. She's right--DD doesn't miss a trick. She can hear someone whisper "Dora" two houses away in a hurricane.

But life with her is at top volume. It's been that way since she started talking at nine months old. LIKE THIS!!! ALL THE TIME!!! Every detail is earth-shattering. Every piece of information is absolutely vital and you need to hear it and memorize it right now or the world might just end, all kidding aside.

This starts at about 6 a.m. (which is a vast improvement from the 5 a.m. that kicked off our days a year ago). She busts out of her room, flinging the door as wide as its hinges will allow, and starts pacing. My bedroom door, her brother's bedroom door, her own door. Mine, his, hers. Over and over, until either DS comes out to play with her, I walk downstairs to start making lunches, or somebody yells at her to be quiet already and go back to bed.

We're pretty well Velcro'ed together, this little loudmouth and me. She loves to follow me around, chit-chattering all the while, no matter what I'm doing. I try to remind her to inhale from time to time, but for the most part, she's just talking away about everything you can imagine, from the TV show she saw last night to the birds on the maple tree in the yard to whatever I'm planning for dinner that night to the underwear she chose that morning.

It's cute at the beginning of the day. As the hours go by, though, it gets less and less amusing. And I'm not proud to say that I've snapped at her more than once by about 4 p.m. My ears and brain go into overload and I just can't take it anymore. Not one. more. word. And she, by her nature, tries to sneak in another tidbit or question or two, and I lose it. My volume goes up. She bursts into tears, sniffles for awhile...and then is right back at it, like nothing ever happened.

Her teacher calls it spunk. "I hope nobody ever squashes that in her," she said today.

"That's because you don't live with her," part of me thought. But then the rest of me grinned. "Yeah," I said. "She's going to run the world one day. On her terms. I guess the rest of us better invest in some good earplugs."