I Just Want You to Know_ Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith, and Family - Kate Gosselin [31]
Alexis also spoke a lot, but she frequently butchered words, so we couldn’t understand most of what she said. She took longer to walk or crawl when she was a baby, so she shrieked when the others came up and took her toys. For Alexis, shrieking was a tried-and-true method that she frequently fell back on. She tried so hard to be understood, but she would quickly become frustrated and then say, “Never mind.” Even now she butchers words sometimes. She’ll say, “What did we have for lunch, Mom? That word I can’t say.”
“Quesadillas.”
“Oh, yeah!”
Aaden didn’t talk much and Joel didn’t talk at all. Hannah talked so much for Joel, in fact, that our pediatrician told me to ask her to stop.
I remember one of the first conversations I had with Hannah. One day, she came into the kitchen while I was making dinner and said, “Me boo boo,” while pointing to her back.
“Where’s your boo boo, Hannah?”
“On my back.”
“Were you jumping?”
“Yes. Jup. Mommy, I need cake.” Now she was pointing to the freezer.
It took me a minute, but I finally figured out she needed the boo boo cold pack shaped like Strawberry Shortcake.
Then when she put it on her arm (close enough to her back), she said, “Mommy, I loo pity.”
“You sure do look pretty,” I replied as I started to heat up broccoli in the microwave.
“Mommy, my nose!”
“Your nose?” I figured she had another boo boo.
“In my nose, Mommy.”
“What’s in your nose, Hanni?”
“Broccies.”
She smelled the broccoli!
I loved their way of communicating at this age. So simple and fun, and they were all so proud of themselves when I understood them.
Another time, when I was finishing dressing Joel and Aaden one morning, Hannah came up the stairs saying, “I need to talk to Mommy. I need to talk to Mommy.” When she finally reached me in the nursery, she said, “Mommy, my jew cup [juice cup], I can’t like it.”
She came all the way upstairs to tell me she didn’t like her juice, in her best British accent—“can’t like it.” Leah did like the juice, which she referred to as her “blue baby” [blueberry] juice.
Leah used to say to Jon that she likes the “hair by his mouth, hair by his nose, and hair by his ears.” He loved that she said this about his beard!
This was also the time when they started telling on each other. At first, I tried to pay attention to all of it, but after so many months (now years!), I started making them deal with it themselves. Now, if someone starts a sentence with his or her brother or sister’s name and unless there is bodily injury involved, I hold up my hand: “I don’t want to hear it. Go work it out.” Tattling is exhausting!
I use their language as a way to set rules and boundaries by doing fill in the blanks. The little kids love giving the right answers. Here are some of them:
“I’m going away because I have to go to work, but I always come…”
“Back!”
“I only go away because I…”
“Have to!”
“Always tell the…”
“Truff [Truth]!”
“You get what you get, and you don’t get…”
“Upset!”
While the kids were using language to start communicating who they were, Jon and I used communication to survive and to handle logistics. And I think we did pretty well with that.
The good days were really good, and as a whole we worked well together. At that point our team was stronger than ever. We had the routine down, and we both knew our own responsibilities—from our schedule at home to whenever we had to go somewhere. If we were taking a family outing, I would pack everything inside and then Jon would load the food, strollers, and everything else I had packed into the van. I would dress the kids, and Jon would do the shoes and coats.
Even so, I had a lot of stress. In public I stressed about the kids running out in a parking lot—and I always wore my emotions on my sleeve. When I felt this way, it came out in anger and frustration, and I often took it out on Jon. I also didn’t focus on the fact that much of the responsibility for our