Pressure

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Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the heavy responsibility of these first few, formative months. For instance:

a) In this short time before my child becomes verbal, I must settle on the best way to read each of the children's books destined for endless repetition. If the dog in the story barks, what should it sound like? If there are words to a song, but no notes provided, what tune do I borrow? Because once my audience gains the ability to protest, I am stuck to one method per story and one method only.

b) Unlearning bad habits. I have frequently mused that young adulthood is the time to learn all sorts of bad habits not permitted while under your parents' roof that then must be unlearned before your children are old enough to mimic. Fortunately, I didn't pick up smoking, chewing, or going with girls who do, but I've begun to use horrendous amounts of cluttering... It's like I um... sort of put in words that are kind of unnecessary. And it is, you know, really sloppy speech, you see?

Oh, the pressure!

Comments

Emily (Laundry and Lullabies) said…
I can relate to point B! Sloppy speech sounds almost normal coming from adults now, but somehow hearing my own speech patterns repeated by my 5 year old makes me cringe. :( Good luck unlearning your bad habits. I'm still working on mine.
10:43 PM
serapio said…
This is your chance to replace the overused pause-filling words with innovative ones. For example, you could replace "sort of" with "tiddly-pom", and "um" with "monspati" (the 'word' verification for this comment). Also, I want to hear you use more unmentionable words, especially "unmentionables".
11:53 PM
Matthew Carroll said…
Wait until your 3 year old insists you read the story in the original language, instead of through translation.
1:01 AM
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