Noise - Passport Diaries

I don’t think, in general, I’m a super loud person unless I’m over caffeinated and excited (Chris may disagree). I don’t like talking over noise. Nothing exhausts me than toys that make noise or a solid couple of weeks of constant grouchy kid screaming. Well nobody like that of course. I like silence and prefer it to background noise. I love earplugs.

All this to say: how do I ALWAYS have the loudest kids in the room? My ears feel like they’re constantly bleeding from the kid noise reverberating around my house.

And this week I got noise shamed at the library!! Worse than shhhhh-ing! We went to use the library wifi one 97degree afternoon and were delighted to find some friends there already. The kids played happily. Sort of. The girls are both nearly two and kept wanting the same toys. Eloise is kind of a brute when it comes to stealing toys and boys seem to usually let her have what she wants (terrifying in its own right). Girls, however, especially other little sisters, are all “forget that.” So these girls were playing together by stealing the same toys back and forth and squawking about it. I know I know—no squawking in the library. But we were in the little kid play area with all the fun toys. So I go over to mediate and shhhhh and the librarian beelines to me.

“Maybe you could take her outside to play until she’s ready to come back in,” she said, giving me her official Big Eyes.

It’s nearly 100 degrees out, the heat of the day, Isaac is playing happily. And Cars 2 is almost done downloading on Isaac’s road trip device. So we (quietly) read books until it was done downloading, then walked the library walk of shame past the librarian desk to the exit.

I am pretty sure that God gave me the loudest kids on the planet to strip away any and all pride. I feel like we invite public humiliation every time we’re out.

This week we sold Chris’ car in preparation for moving, and since it was five million degrees outside and Isaac had been begging to go to the aquarium, we did! We’re so fun (lately).

My favorite parts of the aquarium are the tunnel through a tank, the sea turtle tank, and the shark tank. Eloise hadn’t been to the aquarium since my parents and I took her on her first birthday nine months ago. So Isaac remembered everything, but for Eloise it was all new, and she was DELIGHTED. She exploded in cackling giggles for the very first tank of river turtles. And when we got to the shark tank, oh my. She got quiet. She went right up to the glass wall. There are several wide steps where everyone had sat down for an aquarium talk that ended moments before. A huge sting ray swims at Eloise and she absolutely cannot contain her glee: rising, bubbling, escalating, hooting baby laughter. The general din paused and parents started laughing. “Do you hear that little kid?”

Yes. Oh yes. We hear our Weezie ALL THE TIME.

“I figured it out,” Chris said that night. “Eloise is an external processor…like you.”

So I guess that answers my question. She also likes wearing my beanies and taking selfies.