A Dark Horse

If we had any doubts about our younger son not being able to compete with his older brother in the creation of awkward moments, they were officially laid to rest. A male friend of mine was over eating dinner with us last night when our five year old son offered this interesting tidbit very audibly for all of us to ponder:

"I beat my penis!"

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a new winner, folks. And of course I exhibited my usual grace under pressure with my response of "most males do." Um, oops.

So, the younger brother has raised the bar, at least temporarily. It will only be a matter of time before one of them bests that one.

Call me Delilah

It's been another long absence. Um, oops. The Mister was out of the country for most of last week and I usually don't sleep very well when he's gone, so I ended up too exhausted to be able to construct a coherent sentence. Not only that, Sasha and JP were over for movies many of those nights to keep me company, so there goes that blogging time as well. As for this week, I've been working in the yard or just recovering from last week.

Anyway, enough excuses and on to the subject of my post.

I hardly ever talk about my younger son. He's the biggest pill on the planet sometimes, that is, when he's not being completely charming and happy. He can go from "joy" to "headache" in a heartbeat, usually over something really minor like changing clothes, eating, toilet training, or leaving the house when he doesn't want to, or, as the case has been lately, letting me cut his hair.

It's been months since he would let me cut his hair. We were jokingly starting to call him "Hippy". He would whine, protest, thrash and even throw himself off the haircutting chair if we tried to get him to sit for a haircut, running a great risk of my severely cutting him with the scissors and making it necessary for The Mister to hold him down so that I could finish the haircut that my son, by some miracle, had reluctantly let me start. It usually makes me break into a cold sweat just thinking about his next cut. We had eventually resorted to begging, time outs, even bribes, but they were all useless and it looked like I was losing the battle until I happened to read a post by Heart in San Francisco at Guilty With An Explanation where she wrote about how she used to cut one of her son's hair while he slept. Ingenious! So, that's what I did last night or at least attempted to do and I'm happy to report that, while I take no real pride in the quality of the cut (not one of my better ones... no surprise there), I got the job done.

One thing that I wasn't looking forward to was the scene that he was going to make when he woke up and found that his carefully protected locks were gone. I had the aspirin ready and waiting for the inevitable stress headache. As it turns out, he didn't even notice. Ah, sweet victory.

(Thank you, Heart in San Francisco, for the idea that had never occurred to me. You're a genius. Oh, and I have no idea how your blog disappeared from my links list, but I've fixed that. Your blog is fantastic and I want to spread the joy.)

Parental Advisory- Explicit Lyrics

As some of you know, a lot of the music that I listen to is not exactly kid friendly. For example, the Beastie Boys are not known for their wholesome lyrics. However, this doesn't stop me from listening to the kind of music that I like to listen to, but it does present a rather interesting conundrum when it comes to my kids. They're always, and I mean always around.

At home, this isn't a problem. I just plug myself into my iPod and they're none the wiser, but in the car, music proves to be a little more problematic. So, what's a girl to do? I've become very good friends with the volume knob. It helps to know the lyrics very well. When some explicit lyrics are coming up, you get your hand ready on the volume control and, when you get to the objectionable lyrics, you turn the volume completely off for the duration of the word/phrase that you need to blip out. Done correctly, this technique will help preserve the purity of your child's vocabulary until their friends (or, by sheer accident, you) lend a hand in mucking it up.

Having heard me talk about doing this and also being in the car with us to witness it, Sasha sent this to me. Thanks, dude. ("Dude"... mwaahahahaha!)

What's a Girl to Say?

"Mommy, what's bondage?" My six year old son asked me this question the other day.

Excuse me?

I'll have to say that kids have a way of catching you off guard. When my son was first learning his letters a few years ago, he was writing random combinations of vowels and consonants and one day he wrote the letters A-S-S... in chalk... on the driveway.

"Mommy, does this spell something?" he called across the yard. I walked over to check it out.

"Um, yes, it does. It says 'ass', which can mean either 'a donkey' or 'someone's backside', though the word 'ass' meaning 'backside' is considered bad manners to use around adults when you're a child." He thought about this for a second.

"Oh, okay, then I guess that we better say that it means donkey." Good idea, kid, but we'd better hose it off the driveway anyway. Honestly, though, I secretly think it's pretty hysterical that my son's first real written word accidentally turned out to be "ass." Still, I'm not telling the in-laws about that one.

And then there was the day when he and his brother were playing right after Christmas last year and I heard him emphatically say,

"Look at Santa's SACK!! Santa's SACK'S so BIG tonight!!!" (Gee, son, I hadn't noticed, I was looking at his face.) My son took offense to the fact that I was laughing so hard at him for seemingly no reason. Maybe it wasn't funny. Maybe I was just really tired and delirious. Either way, tough titty toenails, kid. You caught me off guard.

So, what's bondage, eh? I always answer my son's questions as truthfully as possible, but I felt that I needed more information.

"In what context?" I asked.

"In the Wizard of Oz pop-up book, it says that the house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East and released the Munchkins from bondage." Ohhhh, well... that one's simple.

"It means that they were slaves and had to do whatever she told them." He looked satisfied with the answer.

Whew. I'd hate to think that he was going to ask for a pair of handcuffs for Christmas.

The Anti-Mom

When my four year old son was sitting in my lap earlier today, I just had to think how astounding it was that I actually made this little person. Wow! Of course, that led me to think the other recurring thought that often comes to mind when I consider my kids:

"What sick god made me a mother?!" I mean, really, I'm not what you might call the "mommy type". I am the Anti-Mom.

I don't dress like a mother at all (they look so, well, old). The twill dress shorts of the suburban mom? Uh-uh. Not my style. Gimme jeans and harness boots. I'm not dressing like some pop tart, though, because that just wouldn't be attractive. I've had two kids... the belly shirt is out.

I don't listen to what the other mothers listen to and my kids don't listen to what other kids listen to. My kids listen to my music, which runs from Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane to Green Day and Beastie Boys (depending on the language/subject matter). I'd rather be playing Gilbert & Sullivan for them than the pap that's out there for kids. As teenagers, they're going to rebel and start blasting easy listening music on their stereos to spite me. I just know it.

My kids have never been to McDonald's (or any other fast food restaurants, for that matter), which probably falls under the Patriot Act. I have actually told them that it's very yummy, but really, really bad for you... this way I won't lose my credibility when they finally taste it. If I'd told them that it's bad, they'll never believe anything that I say again.

My kids don't watch "kiddy shows", but we do have some Bob the Builder DVD's... Bob is tolerable because it doesn't insult the kids' intelligence as much. I confess to having a crush on Bob at one point, but that was during a serious sleep deprivation stage right after my second son was born. Nothing a little sleep couldn't cure. We also have a few Sesame Street DVDs for their educational content, but I've so far resisted the charms of Elmo because, hey, it would never work out. Elmo is what, three? That's sick.

I don't act my age, thank goodness, which rules out my hanging out with most other mothers. I like to horse around like a kid when the mood strikes me and I would rather be playing in the playground with my kids than standing at the edge of the playground equipment like the other parents. I confess to having way more fun with my teenage nephew than with many, if not most, adults. I think it's just because I have more shared interests with him than with the "grown ups".

I'm not a planet revolving around my kids and husband. Please. It would be nice to talk about something else for a change. I want to show the kids that we're just four people in a bigger world with an infinite variety of things that exist outside of our family.

At the heart of it all, I guess, I'm just not a big fan of doing something just because I'm supposed to do it. I can't think of a worse reason for doing anything. I do things the way that I do because I truly want to.

And there we have it. My kids are stuck with the Anti-Mom. Tough titty toenails, kids! And, kids, hands off the video games... those are mommy's!