Sir, can I help you?

Many studies have shown that the more words a parent speaks around or to their child the better and faster their language skills will develop.  It is even to a point where ads on the radio proclaim a child should hear 30,000 words in a day to be properly exposed to language.  Although I do not count my words on a daily basis, I believe these studies are on to something where it obviously can't hurt to speak more to your baby.

With this in mind I have begun to do what I call "narrate my day" around my little girl.  I basically just tell her what we are doing and make a little game out of the voices I can make and change the inflection in my voice to keep her interested.  She really enjoys the discussions and lately has begun to try to mimic my actions by cooing, grunting and moving her lips.  The problem I have run into is that it is hard to stop once I start my narration.  Even on trips outside the home I find myself thinking out loud and narrating the things we are doing together, especially when she is in the carrier hanging in front of me.  To other people this must look like I am talking to myself.  But the best interaction I had happened in Target last week.

I had Charlotte in her stroller and we were walking through the store picking up all the things we needed on mommy's list.  We headed up to the baby section to scope out the diaper deals for that week and as I walked into the section I started calling out the prices to her and doing the math in my head to figure out if the deal was really that good compared to other stores.  I must have looked very confused not only doing mental math (not my strong suit, just ask my Dad about my struggles with multiplication tables) combined with the fact that I was talking to my child in her stroller made one of the workers walk over to me and say in a very slow but loud voice "Sir,   Can   I   Help   You?"  Thinking back this would have probably been a great opportunity to have some fun with him but I looked up, slightly surprised by the tone of his voice and replied, "No thank you I am just talking to my daughter here about the price of these diapers."  I figured it was better to admit exactly what I was doing then to pretend something else.

The only problem was that our interaction didn't end there.  I went over to the aisle with plastic storage bins and unfortunately they did not have the correct lids for the containers I wanted to buy so I pushed one of the "Need Help" buttons and who should show up?  My best friend, the Target guy.  After helping me to get some more of the lids from the back of the store, he actually apologized for our previous exchange and obviously felt bad for making an assumption about my mental state.

I guess I now qualify for the crazy man who talks to himself in the department store prize...