Nevergirl’s

Today, I caught a terrible cold – the kind that feels like my brain would leak out of my nose. I curled up in bed (nothing new there), asked the yaya for piping hot chokolate, and begged the little girl to talk in whispers. While she doesn’t talk shrill, she talks loud and often; and each time she opens her mouth, I feel like she’s driving a wedge into my brain.

I slept until noon, had lunch brought up to the room, and slept again until the hub woke me up so we could go to the doctor’s. The little girl tagged along, and this is why I now have a terrible headache. She just wouldn’t stop talking!

“My mouth will not listen,” she told the doctor when asked why she couldn’t keep still. “My mouth wants to talk and talk and talk..”

“You could close your mouth.”

“Look o! I close my mouth like this! My mom tells me to close my mouth because she has headache. But my mouth will not listen. It’s bad. It wants to saba so it opens again.”

That is how mouths operate, according to Alex, and that is how she talks – in pidgin English liberally sprinkled with Bisaya. Think, “Ate Adel, can you tusok this please?” and “You said you will kuyog me, rember?”

Sometimes, I can’t tell which is worse: coming down with flu or staying in the same bedroom as a four-year-old with a mouth wholly made up of involuntary muscles.

Posted Family, Raising Alex, While on baby leave |