Oversharing.

The petty irritations, to-do lists, music and memories are never silent in my head. My thoughts run a mile a minute. All the time. Except for in yoga. I can tamp it down to two or three threads then. The heat of the room, the intensity of the practice, my struggle to just breathe and survive to the next posture, all help silence the internal dialog.

On my mind lately? My baby girl who is seven now. A very immature seven. That's OK, there is plenty of time to be old. She is everything her anxious perfectionist big sister fears. She is a mess. When she eats, food ends up on the back of her head, stuck to her earlobe, in the crease of her knee...it's a running joke around here and always proven right. She loses homework or completes it halfway in some sort of pen, pencil, crayon combo, then forgets to turn it in. She needed one more year of speech but didn't get it so she still stutters and spits and trips over consonant combinations.

None of those things stop her from happily breezing through every minute of her disaster of a life. Her newest joy is sharing every detail of her dreams, retelling each social interaction from the playground, and acting out all the funny scenes from her favorite shows. And there are lots of details. Lots. I've been trying to be attentive, sometimes my eyes glaze over in my eagerness to hear more, sometimes I even get to listen through the bathroom door. Because the story never ends. I've attempted to teach her the merits of editing, but that skill must still be in the developmental phase.

Then I realize what's going on. She's my mini-me. I do the exact same thing to any number of people throughout my day. I do it to myself. My older daughter actually cuts me off now with an "ok, ok, ok," chant. Only the cats don't seem to mind. My newest outlet, of course, is the blog.

The little one can't blog or facebook or even hit the yoga room four times a week. I owe it to her to gratefully ingest each excruciating detail. I will be thankful that she wants me as an audience and pay attention while she shares. Maybe I'll even get a word in edgewise during one of her juicy stutters. Talk on baby girl, I'm listening.