Chatty

There have been stages in Eva's life that she's been extremely chatty.  I don't mean using words or making any sense to me, but that she makes noises that have the intonation of normal conversation and she looks at me as though I should be understanding what she's saying.  Clearly in her mind she's trying her best to chat.  

When she was a baby this chattiness was most prevalent at night.  We'd hear her at around 2am most mornings happily talking away to herself in the dark.  When I mentioned this to her doctor she suggested that the dark and quiet environment lent itself to Eva being able to concentrate on making sounds.  But over the recent summer holidays Eva seemed to become a bit quieter.  Or was it me?  I find it hard keeping up a stream of chat with Eva when she doesn't talk back and it's easy to fall into being very much in my brain - replying to emails, pre-empting discussions or just mindless list-making of things to do.  I'm sure she gets bored by me and I sometimes fail to notice that I'm not talking out loud.  But starting school has pulled Eva into a world of non-stop chatter from her peers and it's clearly doing her the world of good.  The other day as I was asking about school I mentioned a particular little boy I'd seen talking to her.  It set her off on probably the longest chat I've ever heard in daylight!  I can't possibly imagine what she was telling me but it clearly entertained her. As does he!