Do You Think I'm Talking to Hear Myself Talk?

About two years ago, there was a Facebook thing going around where you were supposed to write "25 Random Things" about yourself. It's one of the only Facebook notes I ever wrote, but I remember having lots of fun with it. One of my "things" on that list was: "I talk to myself a lot.  I'm actually never really talking to myself, precisely.  Sometimes I rehearse my part in conversations I'm eagerly anticipating or nervously awaiting.  Other times I find myself sort of explaining recent events to an unspecific reader/viewer/listener, like I'm my own first-person narrator.  I usually don't talk out loud, but I almost always move my lips.  And sometimes I get caught.  And getting caught, animatedly but silently talking to myself, is pretty embarrassing.  This is, in fact, the one thing on this list that I'm embarrassed to share." 

After I had Seamus, I found a new way to be less embarrassed about this talking to myself: I could say the stuff out loud, to him -- I could narrate what was going on, practice conversations with him, etc., and suddenly I wasn't having to do it silently, and no one would look askance at me, talking to my kid.  In fact, many of the books I read on parenting and language acquisition encouraged me to talk out loud to him, all day long -- they said that was how he'd get the rhythms and sounds and words and structure of language.

So, for over a year, I've been talking to Shay/myself, all the livelong day, just chattity chat chat.  I talk about what we're doing right now, what we're going to do later, what color things are, what the ducky says to the froggy while they're riding in the tugboat in the bathtub, what I'm thinking about, what I might say to my students tomorrow, what I would say to Scott Walker if I could get five minutes with him (expletives removed), etc. etc.  I have stopped feeling funny asking questions that get no response, or talking and talking and talking without leaving any pauses for response.

Then, the other day, I was trying to get Shay's dinner cooked and organized, and in an effort to get him out from underfoot so that I could move around the kitchen a little, and also partially just because I was thinking out loud about all the dinner things I'd need to have assembled before settling him into his high chair, I said, "Ooh, we need a sippy cup too. Hey, bud, where's your water? Do you see your green sippy cup?"  He let go of my leg immediately, and walked out to the edge of the living room and peered out at his sea of toys.  After 30 seconds of searching, he pointed frantically at a sippy cup nestled in amongst 14 books on trains, buses, and trucks. "Hey, yeah, you're right!" I responded.  "There it is!  Can you go get it and bring it to Mama?" He toddled off, grabbed the sippy cup, and brought it back to me.  "Thank you, Shay! What a good helper you are!" I exclaimed, and he grinned, proudly I think, dropped the cup, and hugged my leg.

This morning, we were in the car heading over to the freeway to head toward my school and his "day care" with Grandma and Grandpa, and we approached three yellow schoolbuses parked outside one of the local elementary schools.  "Look, Shay," I exclaimed, pointing at the buses.  "Buh! Buh! Buh!" he replied, clapping his hands.

I have an interlocutor, it seems.