Women Talk More Than Men

Duh.....

Most will say that's because women have more important things to say and can express it better than a man can. I say, "did you say something?" In reality, my youngest children; Jacob, age 4 and Peyton age 6, prove this point rather nicely.

If you take Peyton anywhere, she doesn't stop talking....ever. From the time she gets in the car until the time she is pushed out of the car because of insanity, she is talking about anything she sees. There are more neurons be fired than contestants on "The Apprentice." I don't really listen because I am pretty up to date with the primary colors, the fashion sense of most 1st graders, the fact that Peyton's teacher is expecting twins this year, that the monkey bars are cold at recess and that Winter is not fun because the grass is always wet and they can't sit down. I ask, "why do you guys want to stand up from your desks at class, go outside and sit back down?" I get the 10,000 yard stare.

My son loves scenery. I assume he loves scenery or he is contemplating his next one syllable, off-topic contribution to any conversation taking place. For example:

Peyton : "....and when the bell rang, we lined up, not by height but by date of birth, which I organized and people weren't listening. All the other students went in and the teacher was telling me I had to hurry up before the kids got cold, which didn't make sense because we all had coats on and-"

Jacob: "Thomas is a blue train"

Nice aside, son. That throws Peyton for a loop because, although her voice has stopped, her brain has continued on and she forgets what she was saying. In all reality, Jacob's interventions often save me (and anyone else in the car) from further bleeding from our ears.

This brings me to my point. At Jacob's daycare, both of the provider's children were having emotional problems and were having meltdowns. This caused a lot of drama within the daycare, all of which Jacob seems to avoid except when it is behind my front door, and it involves his sister. Other than that, he is content with playing with his shadow. So when my wife picked him up today, the provider had mentioned all about the drama including the time, ambient temperature and daily rainfall measurement and apologized in advance if Jacob mentions something on the way home.

So my wife loads him into the car, he buckles up and promptly assumes the observational post of checking out the scenery as it flies by. My wife asks him, "what happened at daycare today." He says nothing happened....not making eye contact as he counts the pollen flying by the car. My wife says, "Lisa said her girls were mad...what happened?" He shrugs, looking at her and says, "they were mad I guess," and turned back to counting. If Peyton was in the car, who KNOWS if the story would have ended. In fact, if I were to go check on her right now, as she lays in bed, I would only guess that she would be mumbling about it still...even though she would have been home for almost 7 hours.

Future filibuster, anyone?