shish-shish

When Olen asks to nurse, he usually asks with either the sign for milk or his catch-all sign — tapping his nose for eat, drink, hungry or food — and what we thought was a made-up wordsound “shish-shish”.

(The sign for “eat” was one of the first ones I taught him. He never quite got the correct sign but instead tapped his nose. Over time, the nose-tapping extended itself to pretty much every aspect of eating and drinking. Correct enough for us!)

I’ve been trying for months to figure out where he came up with “shish-shish”: is it a permutation of “nurse” like “nurses”? Nur-shish? Is it something else he heard somewhere like “tits”? Um, YIKES and also very unlikely since tits isn’t exactly in our everyday vocabulary. Also, YIKES.

So months and months of “shish-shish” go by and I’d pretty much chalked it up to weird toddler language. But then, on our vacation earlier this week, The Overlord was exercising his power over us (me) from the backseat by tapping his nose and saying “shish-shish” repeatedly when we were nowhere near a good stopping point in the drive. At 21 months, he’s almost weaned himself — he rarely asks to nurse anymore and never ever away from home. I asked him to wait a few minutes because we’d be stopping for lunch soon.

I started to think about how much harder it was back when he was just a baby and would cry so hard and I never knew what he wanted. I’m so glad I had breastfeeding, the wonder-calm — looking back it wasn’t so bad when I had that sure-fire way to quiet him and comfort him. I wished I had the same hindsight on what “shish-shish” meant and I worried that he’d wean before I ever found out.

Right then, he belted out a huge cry.

My response? I turned around to look at him and said “Shh-shh little man, we’ll get you something soon.”

And he responded “shish-shish!” and nodded emphatically.

Well then, there was my a-ha moment of the week. Olen was the screamiest of screamy babies — for months on end I was sure he was only quiet when he was nursing or being carried — note I did not say “asleep”, because sleep was rare and short-lived for us all. My automatic-response soothing sound for him is still to make a shush sound twice and my soothing action for all of those many long months was to nurse him back to calm. “Shh-shh” and snuggle him in to nurse.

(I loved having my wonder-calm at the ready, almost anytime and anywhere. Even though I don’t use it much anymore, I’m going to miss nursing him when he’s done. This weaning thing is going to be hard…on me.)

I have a hard time articulating how I feel about the fact he’s named nursing “shish shish”. Is it adorable? Is it sad? Is it sweet? I can’t seem to find the right word. Maybe it’s not something I should feel anything about, maybe it’s not meant to be defined; maybe it’s just something that is, just a part of our story.

Shish-shish.