Quotes from the Backseat

If you’ve never driven around with a couple of boys in the backseat and just listened to the things they say, you are missing out on some funny stuff!

“Eww, Mom!  Trip ate some of my hair!”  (Giggling and a quick denial followed.)

“Here!  Eat my boogers!”  (One boy to the other.  I’m not sure which.  There are things you don’t really want to remember as a mother.)

“Did you poop in your pants?”  (There wasn’t even a fart that preceded the question.  This was just a procession of sillier and sillier questions.)

“Mom, I get a car in a couple of years and then I’ll be able to drive you around.”  (No he doesn’t!  He’s 9 years old!)

“I have thirty degree butt burns!”  (Brothers shouldn’t be able to access each others seat warmers.  Also, thirty degree burns?  I was aware of third degree burns…)

“Mom, he’s going to push the ejector button and throw me out of the car!”  (I wasn’t aware my car had ejector buttons, but maybe the boys did some after market upgrades on my car while I was sleeping one night.)

Things I Learned On Vacation

1. Rock-Paper-Scissors will settle any and every debate.

Who has better looking children?  Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Who is smarter?  Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Who is loved more by mom?  Rock, Paper, Scissors!

By dad?  Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Who will win the first Nobel Peace Prize?  Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock!  (We watch a lot of Big Bang Theory.)

The list goes on and on.

2.  When you see a man with a scar from the corner of his mouth all the way up to his forehead, a knife in one hand, and a chain mail glove, say hi.  Chances are he’ll be very nice.

3. Apparently, the appropriate thing to say after one farts is, “You’re welcome, Mommy!”

Also, my boys are evil demons!

4.  Time still passes when you’re on vacation.  Some times, it passes faster than you expect. We got back home in time to see the annual killing of the corn crop.  Every stalk of corn that was green when we left was dry, withered, and brown.  I understand that insurance will pay a certain amount for crops that don’t produce, but you’d think after watching corn die year after year, they would look for something that actually grows in the area.  Can dead corn actually be used for anything?

5.  When little boys spend almost two weeks in the back of an SUV, it’ll smell like a dorm room. 

Does it matter that my boys are still in single digits?  No.  It smelled like dirty feet.

It took two weeks for that smell to dissipate.

 

Also, we had a great time!!

Tuesday Whilst Eating Oysters

On the second official day of our vacation, we ate at an oyster bar called Wintzell’s in Mobile, Alabama.  The main reason we ate there was because Ed wanted gumbo.  As if we needed any other reason!  I like making that man of mine happy!  (Did you just feel the eyes in his head roll backwards?  I think they’re going to be stuck that way!)

Anyway, we found the restaurant loud and fun and perfect for our foursome!  Shortly after we sat down, Trip asked what an oyster was.  I tried for several minutes to explain what an oyster was, but my explanations just weren’t cutting it.  I noticed a man behind the bar shucking oysters.  I told Trip to get up, we went over to the bar, and I asked if my baby could see one of the oysters he was shucking.

The man was beyond nice.  He told Trip everything he could about oysters in about five minutes and then asked if Trip would like to try one.  Trip absorbed everything gratefully.  Then, the nice man asked Trip if he wanted to try one.  Trip thought about it for a minute and didn’t say anything.  The man then suggested that Trip try one on a cracker and my little boy was down to try an oyster.

I put about seven and a half drops of Tobasco on the oyster before he was ready to try the oyster and had a folded paper towel in case the oyster came rapidly back out with instructions on what to do if said oyster did not agree with him because I have some major texture issues and am extremely conscientious to the texture issues in others, but little dude chewed it up and swallowed all of it and claimed to like the raw oyster.

I was proud.  There is absolutely no chance I would have tried anything like that when I was his age.  Dude was brave!

We went back to our table and bragged to Ed about what he had done.  Ed was dutifully impressed.  We all looked over our menus and Trip insisted on ordering the oyster sampler.  They oyster sampler consisted of sixteen oysters prepared in several different ways.    The dish was expensive so I offered to share the dish with Trip since I only wanted a bowl of gumbo anyway.

Can you guess what happened when the food came out?

It won’t be hard.  I promise.

Trip took one look at the huge plate of oysters, then looked at me and my gumbo, and said he couldn’t eat any of the oysters.

I wasn’t entirely surprised, but REALLY, DUDE?

I didn’t want a huge plate of oysters.  I had only planned on stealing his oysters Rockefeller.

Trip and I traded seats and I ate the oysters and Trip ate my gumbo.  I did have a bite of the gumbo and it was AMAZING! 

What are you going to do?  There’s no wasting good oysters!

Demon Child, You Can’t Say That to Me While I’m Driving!

I don’t get to pick up the boys from school on a regular basis anymore because of my new work schedule, but when I do, there’s usually only one subject on their minds:  farting!  Or burping!  Really, gas coming from one of them or gas being the subject of their conversation and they’re both happy little guys.

They’re boys.  They’re consistent.  At least the little dudes are funny.

A couple of weeks ago, I got off work early and was able to pick my munchkins up from school and they did something really weird.  They got in the car and didn’t once mention farting or burping.  Instead Twin &^%$ was just about beside himself.  A couple of the popular girls had set their eyes on him.  The other boys in his class (including his brother) had kicked him out of the boys’ club but he didn’t care.  (The “boys’ club” would be simply the group of boys in the class, not a real affiliation.  They aren’t that organized yet.)  I do think that either one of those girls who set their eyes on my boy would chew him up and spit him out without a second thought, but as young as they are, I’m not going to have to go into psycho-mommy mode yet.  I don’t think they really understand what a man-eater is yet, but, oh buddy, they’re going to be hell on wheels when they’re older.  Twin &^%$ wasn’t quite sure what to make of the events of the day, but he was just flabbergasted.  He had never been the object of such desire from anyone before, much less two of the most popular girls from school.  He fumbled over his words and told me that both girls wanted to be his girlfriend but he wasn’t sure which one he liked and either he would have to chose one of them or one of them would have to make her decision about him.

The other boy, Twin !@#*, told me that he was still in the boys’ club, that he didn’t care for the girls chasing after his brother.  Twin !@#* has his own girlfriend, thankyouverymuch, and she was much nicer than the vixens chasing his brother.  “Momma,” he said to me, “when I look at my girlfriend, she is so beautiful, all I see is an angel.”

Excuse me?  I’m driving here, you little demon child!  You can’t say something that sweet, that uncharacteristic, that freaking AWESOME while I’m driving!

I still can’t believe I didn’t wreck.  I was speechless, but still capable of driving.

His father has never said anything quite like that to me.  But then, Twin !@#* didn’t say it to his girlfriend.  He said it to me.  I don’t know what Ed has said about me to his mother, but we have a very good relationship, so I’m sure whatever he has said to her in the past was good.

Obviously, there’s a twin from this story who would like to remain anonymous, so they must both remain that way.  The other one doesn’t care.

I sat on this story for a couple of weeks trying to figure out how I felt about it.  Obviously, my job as the Momma is to make sure my babies are able to find their way in this world.  I need to make them feel safe and secure enough at home and in my love for them that they can go out and explore that big world out there and hopefully, make a difference.  I also want them, when the time is appropriate, to find a significant other and have a happy and healthy relationship with that person.  (Obviously, I don’t really care about the gender of that other person.  I just don’t.)  What I want from that relationship, which I hope will be their last relationship, is for the other person to make my baby feel as wanted, as desired as the two popular girls did to Twin &^%$.  I also want my baby to feel like Twin !@#* does about his girlfriend now.  I want them to make someone’s heart sing and their eyes light up.  I want that someone to make my boys’ hearts’ happy.

Bob the Parasite Cat. Or, the Shade Thief.

This is Bob.  He leads a difficult life.  Someone simply must enjoy the cool air coming out from underneath the house whilst napping in the shade on a hot day, mustn’t they?

And who else is there to hold down the steps leading up to the front door?  No one else!  That’s who.

Occasionally, the weather worn wooden bench feels neglected and it does make for the perfect place to nap in the sun before it gets too warm, but sometimes, only sometimes, Bob’s nemesis Frank steals the wooden bench.

Hey lady, I’m napping here!

Bob is not my cat.  He’s not our cat.  He is a feral cat who has been napping in our courtyard and traipsing through our bushes to get to the creek down the street for the better part of 3 years.  His diet must consist of bugs and rodents and birds and such.  I’m sure he gets all of his water from the creek.  Bob won’t let any of us get any closer than 10 feet away from him before he decides he has napped long enough and darts quickly away.  Thank goodness for the zoom lens on the camera.  We see him almost every day though and Bob seemed like the most appropriate name for him.  The munchkins merrily call out “Hi, Bob!” when they see him, then they try to approach him and he quickly runs away.  Frank does not give the munchkins the chance to tell him hello.

Avocado Green Poop. Yes, That’s the Title.

I’m pretty sure all children like to hear about what they were like as babies and toddlers.  This is one of the boys’ favorite stories.

After we brought the boys home from the hospital after their debut into the world, the prevailing opinion on bathing babies was that you don’t immerse them in water until their umbilical cords fell off.  (I have no idea what the prevailing opinions on bathing newborns is now.  I don’t even really want to know.)  We sponge bathed them regularly, but even newborns get a little ripe after a few days.  (We also didn’t really know how to properly dry out the umbilical stump so it would fall off so it took FOREVER.)  Being brand new parents to two tiny people, Ed and I were naturally terrified of them.  We had no idea how to bathe a baby, but the babies in our house had to be bathed so we had to figure out how to survive the bath.  (I mean me and Ed surviving.  We knew we would be able to keep the cherubs safe throughout a bath.)

We set the plastic baby bath tub on the bathroom counter and started filling it with warm water.  We decided on Trip as the first baby to endure the bath.  I stripped the tiny boy down and he commenced to screaming because he didn’t like being naked.  As I held him over the water on his way down to set him softly in the tub, he dropped an avocado green turd into the water.  I yanked him up, horrified that my baby might have been bathed in poop water.  He promptly pooped in my hand.  There was avocado green poop in my hand!  I had never before been so disgusted.  Ed was laughing uncontrollably.  I put my naked, screaming, cold baby against my chest so I could clean off my hand and we could dump the poop water and start over with the bath.  Trip pooped in my hand while I was holding him against my chest.  Ed tried to coo sympathetically at me while simultaneously laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.  Trip continued to scream and Ed filled the tub with fresh water.  We had come this far and we were not going to be stopped.  The bathtub held about three inches of lukewarm water and I set Trip down in the tub.  He screamed louder.  Ed and I scrubbed the little munchkin down as quickly as we could, rinsed the soap off, and got him into a towel.

I carried my traumatized munchkin draped with a baby towel into the nursery and set him on his changing table.  He got a fresh diaper and a new set of pajamas.  He had stopped crying, but only because one can only cry for so long.  He had started the traumatized, hiccupping breathing thing that babies do when they’ve finally cried so much that they can’t cry anymore.

Logan did not get bathed that night.

Logan didn’t get bathed for three more nights.

Sponge baths sufficed until I was ready to endure that trauma again.

Believe it or not, the bathing got better.  They even started liking the baths.  One of their favorite phrases now is “Avocado Green Poop!”

Unsalted Cat Turds

We had Rangers baseball tickets for the second Wednesday after I got back from vacation and I spent more than a week thinking I was on heart call for surgery (I love my new job!) and couldn’t go to the game with Ed and the boys.  I thought I was on call right up until I left work at 3:00 that afternoon when I double checked the call schedule and found out I was not on call.  Score!  I called Ed and told him I could go to the game.  Fortunately, he hadn’t found anyone to take my ticket.

We hopped into Ed’s SUV and drove an hour and a half to the Ballpark at Arlington.  It’s a drive we make fairly frequently.  The boys, as they tend to do, told plenty of fart jokes and farted and said, “You’re welcome, Mommy!”

Red lights are red.

Green lights are green.

How much can I fart if I eat one pinto bean?

They are a gift to poetry.

At some point in the drive, Logan became upset with Trip and was trying to illustrate how cruel Trip was to him.

“He really doesn’t love me!  He’s so mean to me!  He’s so mean, he gave me cat turds for Christmas last year!”

He gave you WHAT?

“He gave me cat turds and made me eat them!”

Oh, the horror!

“It’s not funny, Dad!”

I agree, boy.  It’s not funny.

Giggle.  Snort. (From Trip, not Logan.)

“He didn’t even put salt on them before he made me eat them!”

Logan was distraught!

I died laughing!  I couldn’t hold it back anymore.  The poor boy was so upset though about the mistreatment he had withstood at the hands of his brother.

We got to the game and bought lots and lots of food.  Logan and Trip are at an age where they can finally appreciate a good baseball game without constant intervention and placation.  In the fourth inning, the Rangers had done something which resulted in a sponsored giveaway for the fans.  We all got coupons to Denny’s for a free grand slam breakfast with the purchase of a drink.  After lots and lots of explaining what the coupons meant, Logan decided it was time to bargain.  I told him I’d give him my pancakes because I can’t have them anyway with my paleo diet.  Never mind that I don’t like pancakes anyway and wouldn’t eat them even if I wasn’t following any kind of diet, I would just give them to him.  Logan didn’t want my theoretical pancakes.  He wanted my bacon.  Naturally, I refused.  We’re talking bacon here.  I’m not giving it up!  Logan threatened to eat my arm because I wouldn’t commit to giving him the bacon from the free breakfast.  I told him my arm was paleo and asked him if he was turning into a cannibal.  He grinned, licked his lips, and tasted my arm.  He threw my arm back at me, saying it tasted like I hadn’t showered in weeks.

Demon child!

As I protested his assertion, he assured me he was still going to eat my arm, I just needed to clean it first.

Relearning To Swim

The boys and I went swimming at a local pool with some friends recently and well, I’m a bit of a slacker mom at times and they hadn’t been swimming in about 10 months.  Shame on me!  I told them on the way there that they had to prove to me they could still swim before they could go in the deep end by swimming two laps across the shallow end without stopping.  It’s a good thing I made them try swimming laps first because they had forgotten almost everything they once knew!  Logan, who is my extrovert and who insists on being the center of attention, especially when in a crowd, barely spoke to anyone for an hour and a half because he was busy retraining his body to swim.  Nothing was going to deter him from becoming a good swimmer and nothing did.  Trip remembered fairly quickly how to swim and became the center of attention.

He is now, and I suspect always will be, a ladies man.

It’s hard getting munchkins to look at the camera when they’re having a good time!

Yogulous was so proud of himself when he finally was confident in his swimming skills!

Two of my girlfriends were there and we all have kids in the same class.  They were both life guards in their teens and kept a constant eye on the boys.  All together, we had seven kids there and I must have counted to seven a million times, but every second was fun!

This Boy Is Gross Too.

This boy.  He, too, is disgusting.  He’s cute, but totally disgusting.

His favorite sentence is, “Hey Mom, look at this!”

And I turn and look at him and am immediately grossed out.  It’s because he does this.

(He kind of looks like he’s possessed when he does that.)

And this.

This is the regular shoulder.

See?  Nice and round and not popped out of place.

This is his newest gross thing.  The thumb should not look like that.

Try it.  I bet your thumb won’t tuck back behind your forefinger knuckle.  Or maybe that’s normal and I’m getting old and arthritic.

Aren’t you glad I shared those with you?

I’ve Learned Another Parenting Lesson the Hard Way

I’ve learned yet another parenting lesson the hard way.  Again.  I’m sharing so that you might learn from my mistakes and so that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to remember the lesson for the future.

The lesson is this:  It is always easier to teach your children a lesson when you are healthy than when you feel like crap.

I came home from Florida late Saturday to a house that was clean and to laundry which had all been cleaned, folded, and put away.  (No, really.  It happened.)  Ed the Awesome had been going like crazy all week long!  The house looked amazing, the boys were still healthy, happy, and clean, and he had worked a grueling week at the office.  I came home, unpacked, and relaxed some more.

Total bliss for me and even though I was able to take some of the load off Ed, he was still tired.  His body was worn down!  He went to bed early and woke up early on Monday to go to work.  He was home by 9:00 that morning and slept all day.  He took himself to the local emergency room Tuesday morning and I met him there.  Hours later and bags of IV fluids later, we were home and he was back in bed, feeling only slightly better.

I was exhausted by the end of the day and yet, the boys still had to have a parent available.  I sat on the couch nearly comatose from exhaustion with the television set to cartoons for the boys while they played on their computers.  Late in the evening, the boys announced that they were hungry which I should’ve expected since  they usually eat at that time of the day.  I did the lazy thing and told the boys to get themselves something to eat.  I taught them to use the microwave a few months back and Logan made good use of that skill, but Trip went searching through the refrigerator and found some fresh broccoli he wanted to eat along with some ranch dressing.  I told him to cut up the broccoli and he said, “How?”  It was a fair question since the boy has never cut up a vegetable.

I told him to grab a knife and told him where to cut the broccoli.  He picked out a butter knife and managed to not maim himself.  He ate every last bit of that broccoli and loved it!  If I had not been exhausted and on my way to also getting sick, I wouldn’t have dreamed of telling Trip to cut up his own broccoli.  But I was exhausted.  And the next day I alternated between freezing and burning up.

Now that I’m feeling better again, it’s time for each boy to have a lesson in cutting up their vegetable of choice while supervised so that when I do feel bad again, I can have them get their own dinner ready and not have to worry about them while they’re using a knife.