A failure to communicate

Our girls were sitting in our van in front of the library. I was waiting with them to run into Denison while Bethany dropped some books off.

“I wish we could drive all around the whole world in our van!” declared Ellen, who is four.

“That would take HOURS,” observed her older sister Grace, who is six. “Vanna would get TIRED!”

(Grace decided a while back that our van needed a name, so she named it “Vanna.” I don’t know whether or not Vanna White would be flattered, but I thought it was appropriate. I named my first car in high school, “Nova,” after my Great-Aunt Nova. Of course it was a Chevy Nova, so that was appropriate too. I’ve heard a lot of people name their vehicles weirder names than “Vanna.”)

“Yeah, so we’d have to take lots of toys, maybe we could bring ALL our toys in the van,” said Ellen, I sat with a magazine in the front seat and rolled my eyes.

“There wouldn’t be enough roooom!” insisted Grace.

“And we’d have to live in a hotel,” noted Ellen. That must mean more than just a few hours, I thought. And an awful lot of gas. How would we drive over the ocean? That hadn’t even occurred to the girls.

“Then we could go swimming in the pool at the hotel!” said Grace.

“Daddy, can we drive around the whole world?” asked Ellen.

“Boy, would you settle for Pizza Hut?” I offered.

“Yeah Pizza Hunt! Pizza Hunt, Pizza Hunt!” They both started chanting… “Mommy?” They later asked, “What’s a HUNT?”

“Well, when your Uncle Mark and his friends come up and they take their guns and try to catch pheasants, they’re going hunting,” she explained quite reasonably.

“NO- like PIZZA HUNT! What’s a pizza hunt?” They asked again.

Ever try to clearly teach inflection to hyper and hungry little kids in a van listening to Sunday school or nursery rhyme tapes? “No honey, not huNt, just hhhUT. Can you say ‘pizza hhUT’?” we asked.

“Peessa hhhhuNt,” they both tried.

Sigh.

Their baby sister Annamarie is now reaching a point where she tries to converse as well,

“Jabber, jabber, prattle prattle, jab jab jab” she’ll explain, looking intently in your eyes and adding hand gestures and body language to drive home her point.

“Hmmm, uh huh, I think so too,” we usually tell her patronizingly.

She does know at least two words. “Da-da” is my favorite. Of course, Grandpa is “Da-da,” Mom is “Da-da,” Great-Grandma is “Da-da,” pretty much everybody is “Da-da,” so I can’t get too excited.

Grace and Ellen were thrilled to report to us Annamaries’ second word, “This.”

I’m not even sure if “this is a real word, you know? What I mean by that is, is “this” a noun? As in, “look at this.” Or is it a pronoun or is it an adjective? As in: “I have this problem…” Or is it an article” Like “A,” “An,” and “The?” You see what I’m getting at? Sure it’s a real word, but it’s not a very meaty word as far as meaning goes. It’s not like a powerful noun like “Momma” or “Da-da,” or “Sis-sis.” And it’s not a powerful verb like “Wuv” or “kiss.”

Bethany went to work right away trying to turn Annamarie’s “This” into “Kiss,” by repeating the word “kiss” and offering her cheek or puckering her lips, eventually kissing the little sweetie. But to no avail, Annamarie would continue carrying objects up to us, toys, clothes, sippy-cups, showing the things to us and telling us “This. This.”

I mean, what do you say to that? We just look at her and smile and nod and say, “Yep, that’s what that is alright, that’s ‘this.’”

Could be worse I suppose. I remember Ellen’s cousins had her chanting “mine, mine” all the time. And I never quite knew what to do with Grace when she was a tot and we’d taker her places and she’d keep repeating, “who’s-dat-guy? Who’s-dat-guy?”

So Now I just have fun with it. I’ll come home from work and see Annamarie and ask her, “Hey kiddo, what’s up?”

And of course, she’ll tell me, “this.”