Communication in a House with Five Kids

Our house is wonderful. I fell in love with it the moment I laid eyes on it, almost 7 years ago. However, 7 years ago things were different. There were 3 of us who moved in here. Something has happened over the years. I can't explain it, but the house has shrank. Seriously, it's gotten a whole lot smaller.

I'm not complaining, not even a little bit. I still love my house and we fit perfectly as far as I'm concerned. The only problem that we do run into, from time to time, is trying to find a place to talk where no little ears are listening.
I have to say we have been very creative in finding ways to get our point across without the kids catching on. Over the years we've had to evolve our methods. In the beginning Spelling worked beautifully. Then I went and taught the kids to read and BAM they knew what we were saying. "ICE CREAM?!?! WE'RE GETTING ICE CREAM!?!?" I really should have thought this "education" thing through! 

Next, we moved on to French, this has served us well. It has also resulted in a lot of hilarity, as we try to come up with words to use when we can't think of the real French word for what we are trying to say. I fear this method will soon be obsolete as the little people are starting to pick up words here and there! I told Mark we could learn Latin together, but I want to teach them that at some point as well. Perhaps German is a safer choice! 

I really shouldn't worry though, I think we are starting to pick up on each other's thoughts. The evidence of this happening was overwhelming this week, when Emmitt decided to give us both a few extra grey hairs. 

We've gotten used to not having a baby around and had gotten lax about putting up gates. I left the baby playing with Mark and walked away. Assuming I had put up the baby gate he put Emmitt on the floor to play. I was doing Elianna's hair when I happened to glance towards the stairway, and noticed my wee little man happily bum scooching his way towards the top of the stairs! He was a mere half scooch away from toppling right down our hard wooden stairs and landing on the ceramic tiles at the bottom!

My mind froze! My mouth froze! My body froze! I screamed! All I could manage to get out of my mouth was  "MARK MARK MARK MARK!!!"
In the time it took me to screech out the last MARK at the top of my lungs, my knight in shining armour was at the top of the stairs with his arms around my sweet baby. 

After we both started breathing again, I apologized for incoherently screaming like a banshee at him. My Knight's answer? "That's ok, I knew what you meant, I got him!" 

Phewph - I guess when the kids learn French, I'll just start speaking banshee.