CRY HAVOC!!!

LMJ has discovered sound. I don’t mean that Benny Hinn fixed her hearing with the Power of The Lord. I mean she’s learned that if she does X it makes a certain noise and if she does Y it makes a different noise. All kids go through this. It’s a developmental stage blah blah blah tl/dr. A bunch of us witnessed this at Maggianno’s on New Year’s. After dinner while we were divvying up the leftovers, LMJ stopped running around, took a deep breath, and shrieked banshee style. I chalked it up to the massive ate-her-own-weight-in-chocolate-cake (31lbs. legit) sugar high and didn’t think too much about it at the time. Yesterday, the 2nd, she got her mom’s camera tripod and screamed into the handle like it was a microphone. I was trying to place some bets online so she can go to a decent school and didn’t see her get set up. The first howl startled me. I thought it was the police – offshore gambling is illegal. I turned around in time to see that it wasn’t Five-0; it was my baby girl. Her face was scrunched up, and I could tell that she was jacked to the max. I ran through a bunch of emotions. I started out scared, moved to annoyed because we were in our dining room, rallied to proud, which slid into apprehensive because it was just a matter of time before Mommy realized that she’d seen that face before. It was smaller and the voice was a few octaves higher than before, but she’d seen that face – that exact face. My mom has a saying about having a dime in that quarter, referring to hereditary traits. When it comes to LMJ’s screaming, I think I have a dollar in that quarter and let her keep the change. I went back to being proud and that’s what stuck. I know what it feels like. I know that it’s not something that’s done as much as it’s something that’s released. I had to stop myself from screaming along with her, but with grading still to be done, and vacation almost over, that would have pushed Mommy over the edge and she would have started screaming, but her screaming wouldn’t have been the fun kind of screaming.