"na na we do, is he talking Spanish, mama?"

As I zone out and prepare supper, I always flip the radio on and listen to the drive home show or the news. I find it really relaxing to let someone else do the talking. I've had to re-evaluate this practise a bit since I've had kids for two very different reasons. For my son, he seems to have a knack for picking up little snippets that he hears and launching into surprising lines of questioning. The other day, he exclaimed, "I just heard him say "they cannot find his head"".

In my daughter's case, she not only tunes out the radio, but also, ever since she was little, me turning the radio on, was like a challenge to her to begin speaking or to speak louder. When we are driving she prefers that if someone is going to talk, it should be us doing it not someone on the radio.

My son, on the other hand, will exclaim with delight, "Canada day! Mama, they just said Canada day on the radio" or incredulousness, "sell-off-vacations????" Occasionally, there is a brief lull in the conversation and the radio, which has been quietly playing in the background, is suddenly the loudest thing in the room. "The plane was shot down" echoes out into the room. My daughter proceeds to begin loudly planning our next lemonade stand and my son starts down another path. "The plane was shot down!?" "With a gun mama? Why would they shoot down a plane? I want to fly a helicopter."

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