Maybe I'll just stick my head in the freezer

I love the mornings in my cabin. We have this great natural air-conditioning here, since it cools down so much at night. We open all the windows in the evening and when I wake up early to sit with my coffee and book (right now, the Journey of Desire-- wonderful) it is chilly enough to make my toes cold. I know that soon it will be warm enough, hot, even, hot enough for a desert lizard, so I don't mind.

I love the quiet. I am mulling over the fact that the Leafy Boy is starting to really talk. He looks at me earnestly and tries to make sentences. "Mom-mee," he says, "Aww Dah, DAWN." Which of course means, Mother dearest, I'm finished with the delightful banana you broke into pieces for me and would love to get out of this highchair contraption you have strapped me into.

But really, this means that soon I will have three talking children in my life. Three children to call for me and tell me long and involved stories, and to say things to me like, "You didn't get my juice yet," in an extremely demanding (one might even say hostile) tone of voice, which is corrected continually but can't seem to change, in its three-year-old way. Where will I take my brain to rest it? Sometimes I just want to wring it out, you know? Or put it in the creek for awhile, to cool it down.

And Kid A's stories. Don't get me wrong, because I listen with all the love that a doting mother can give to her son. But they- I don't know- don't seem to really go anywhere? We start out with a dinosaur, which is sad, or something, and we end with a dinosaur which is sad or something. But it seems to be important to Kid A to get all of this out, so I will listen to these fifteen minute stories about the dinosaur who continues to be sad, but once again, where will I take my brain to rest it?

Or YaYa. YaYa is in a stage which I like to call the pure nether-regions of emotion. She is emotive in the most wonderful and terrible senses of the word, and she doesn't have stories that don't go anywhere, but what she does have is a mighty decibel range. She has a powerful set of lungs, that girl, and she isn't afraid to use them. I am helping her to channel her emotions into more effective ways of communication, but at the same time I am awed and impressed by her passion. She is everything I wish I could dissolve into when something doesn't go my way. And my brain is melting.

And Baby Leaf is talking, and he says his words with pride, because he can communicate, he can let me know what he wants. And he loves to babble, so sometimes he just does that. He is heartbreakingly cute.  And when he kisses me he puts a chubby hand on each side of my face and leans in and puts a sort of raspberry on my lips in imitation of a kissing sound, and it is wet and scrumptious and I wipe Leafy drool away from my chin while my heart melts.

What do I need a brain for anyways? This is birdsong, an aria, a bow over the strings of a cello. Childish voices, singing and yelling and laughing. Distracted, absentminded, my mind is filled with the most beautiful clutter, and silence might be the emptiest luxury, after this.