All I hear all day is “heyyyy, baaabbyyyyy!” It’s like there’s an Italian New Yorker living in my house or something. But, there’s not. It’s just a toddler who has picked up on the fact that mommy and daddy call her, and each other, “baby.” I mean, that is pretty confusing. (Why am I so addicted to nicknaming everyone “baby?”). Emerson has also noticed that when mommy and daddy are on separate floors of the house, one of us will inevitably call out “hey, baby….” So now, Emerson stands at the bottom or top of the stairs and just shouts “heyyyyy, baaabbyyyyy” over and over. Yes.

It’s pretty astounding, though, to watch Em learn to talk. You can see that she truly was storing everything we said to her for the first chunk of her life. Now it all comes trickling out of her tiny mouth as if it’s no big deal. And I can’t even keep up with how many words she knows, because she’s learning them every day. This may all seem like just another mother bragging, but the day your child begins to communicate with you, really communicate, is so thrilling. It’s like living with the coolest person you’ve ever met who is just too cool to ever talk to you for almost a year…..and then, one day. She is totally talking to you, OMG.

But, she doesn’t just want to talk to me now that we’re living at a boarding school. No. She wants to talk to everyone. It feels like Emerson is running for office or something. She must greet every person (all 895 of them) in the dinning hall, stopping to charm the pants off the ones who seem skeptical of her existence and putting on shows for the ones who “aww” at her. And then anyone under the age of eight….watch out. She’s got so many (mini) adoring fans, hugging and kissing and carrying her around. She even found herself a boyfriend (a two-year-old who calls her “girlfriend”) within just a few days of being here. They kiss each other on the lips while saying “muah!” and we all die from cuteness. And when did my child become such a social butterfly??

So, clearly, living at a boarding school has had a positive effect on my girl. And on us. Living amongst a constant audience has provided so many new experiences. Sure, it’s like being followed around with a mirror….which can be unnerving when you are trying to raise a toddler, have a marriage, and acclimate to a new place without any closed doors around to hide behind. But, you also have that mirror to show you just how lucky you are—for one, how supper happy and friendly and lovable your child is (aka, validation that you are doing something right). All of the gratefulness I feel right now has been well worth sleeping on two plastic, cement-like twin mattresses pushed together for the past three weeks.