It's Eerie

Both of my children can read my mind. I am not kidding. Either they are truly clairvoyant or they're so multi-channel perceptive they can simply sense what I am going to say next. Maybe it's because we live in a relatively small world (home-park-school-home) with a shared set of memories and experiences. Maybe it's because we're so big on routines at our house any dummy could guess what will happen next, but I doubt it. Maybe my kids are just extra-special. Do I sound ridiculous or what?

It happens at least once a day, with one child or the other. For instance, I will be thinking about how I really should make chicken for dinner, and Veronica will run in shouting "Chicken!" and flapping her arms. Or Rex will say "Nana, Grandpa?" the minute before the phone rings (guess who). This all started happening when Veronica was around one year old, and at first I thought maybe I had said my thoughts out loud and then forgotten I'd said them, and she was just babbling my thoughts back to me. Then it started to happen all the time, to other people who happened to be with Veronica when she did it. And these people would later say to me, "You'll never guess what Veronica blah blah so-and-so such-and-such etc. today!" and I would just nod. After a while we all got used to it.

Now it's the same way with Rex. He seems to take everything Veronica ever did when she was his age to the nth degree, and I am happy to see that he's got one of her more charming traits. I'm sure I will feel this way until the kids hit adolescence and become way smarter than me (this may be happening already) and the mind-reading thing will backfire. For now, it's just very cute, and I remain in awe of my kids' mental abilities.

Yes, I know I still sound ridiculous.