Oh, so now I am THAT person

Before we had a kid, my husband and I used to marvel at how parents could tune out the incessant naggy, whiny voices of their children while engaged in conversation with other adults.
"How does that happen?" we asked each other, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, when we would leave an engagement that involved such parents and children. You see, back then we were the "other adults."

Now I am a parent, and my child talks ALL OF THE TIME. My ears are constantly ringing at a pitch that mimics the voice of my daughter, even when she has been at daycare for hours. The last time we slept over my sister's house, after a night of drinking some (lots) of wine, a collective attempt to knock the voices of all of our children out of our ears, I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night because the smoke alarm was running out of batteries. It was chirping at the very same pitch as her voice and I thought she was calling to me. If you have ever heard a smoke alarm chirp, you are getting the picture of this torture.

This morning, as I was dropping her off at the day care/sitter's house, I was trying to have some much-needed adult conversation with the sitter. I was talking and laughing until I realized that during the entire conversation, my daughter was whining something at me over and over. The problem is, she was whining about picking up the bag of toys we brought, and I did not realize it, did not even hear it, until her sitter bent over to pick it up for her. As I rewound the moments and tuned in, there was that chirping, "I want that bag, I want that bag, I want that bag, I want that bag, I want that bag. Get me that baaaaaaag."
The sad thing is, I was holding my daughter the whole time, which means her mouth was about 2 cm from my ear.
The sad thing is, I have no idea what else I am tuning out in the world.
The sad thing is, I am really missing her pinball-like movement around the room right now, and yes, even the sound of her voice.


About this photo: Taken last weekend at a local park, she is holding a tiny leaf, explaining to me that it was falling, falling, falling from the sky, how it lived in the clouds, in a castle on top of a beanstalk, that you had to climb, climb, climb and be careful of the BIG GIANT that says fo fum and stomps, chirp...chirp...chirp...chirp.