Like Baby Killer Whales

One night last week, at about what I would conservatively estimate was three in the morning, L., who was asleep in the pack-and-play at the foot of our bed, woke up. Now L. is a talker when she wakes up- she is content to lie in bed and chat with her mobile or even just herself until someone comes to get her. E., on the other hand, when she wakes up and finds herself without one of her adults, begins to cry in such a way that lets you know that if she was mobile and knew how the phone worked she would be on it to report you to Family and Children’s Services for gross neglect. Anyway, on this particular night E. was asleep in our bed between Rob and me. (If your first thought on hearing this is “I would NEVER allow my child to sleep in my bed, well, then, you have never had two five month olds that you were desperate to keep from waking one another up when one of them began crying. For someone who has been prevented from working out by a twin pregnancy and the subsequent having two babies for the past year, I can move remarkably fast to prevent this from happening). So L was awake and talking, which woke Rob and I up at about the same moment. In the light that comes in from the street outside our house, we could see E. As we watched, she woke up, stretched out and heard L. and gave her huge, gummy smile, obviously delighted to hear L. and started to babble back. L. got quiet and listened and then she started talking again while E listened. They conversed in the dark for probably about five minutes before falling back asleep. Rob commented that it was a lot like listening to killer whales communicating across miles of ocean that you’re always seeing on documentaries. Except in this case, the miles of ocean were about eight feet of queen sized bed and the whales were just two babies who have recently begun discovering the other one. The whole incident reminded me of this picture of E. (taken by Erin) and her stuffed whale her Aunt Erin and Uncle Elliot got her. The other is a picture of L, also taken by Erin that makes me smile.