Recently in Kid(s) Category

C-Man: Boy Detective, why does every diaper change have to come with a fight?

Boy Detective: Because YOU CAN'T GRAB ME!

C-Man: Well then, you can't wiggle.

Boy Detective: Yeah.

C-Man: So is that a deal?

Boy Detective: No.

C-Man, turning up the radio: Hey Boy Detective, you wanna rock out?

Boy Detective: Daddy, turn the music off.

The Princess: Child, that is TRENT REZNOR!

C-Man: Boy Detective, we're going to have a talk about this at some point.

We did not have a girl baby because I quilt.

Okay, I used to quilt. But hey, I got my sewing machine set back up again this weekend so there is hope.

The fact that my chosen sewing-related hobby is quilting tells you two things about me:

I can sew.

I like sewing flat things.

If we had a girl baby, because of the bit above that says "I can sew," people who know I can sew would expect me to make her dresses and rompers and whatever. However, did you read that bit up above that says "I like sewing flat things"? Last I checked, children's clothing is not flat.

So people would ask me when I was going to sew something for her, and when I said "never" they wouldn't believe me in the same way that no one believes me when I said I didn't want to have another baby, and I'm all "no really" and they're like "you'll forget how much you hated being pregnant" and I'm all "maybe if I get a head injury." It is my least favorite thing to be told how I feel, by the way. It's even worse than chocolate. (If you're new here, I hate chocolate. Hate. I hate being told I don't really hate it, too, so don't go there.)

While attempting to maintain my disguise as a civil, non-misanthropic member of society when in the presence of my offspring, I would then be burdened with:

1. My desperate boredom at having to hear the 1,032nd stranger say "Well I can see where that child gets the red hair from!" or "You must be Irish!" or whatever stunningly insightful comment they can come up with about the fact that C-Man, Boy Detective, and I are all redheads. OMG, yes, sometimes people with red hair meet, get married, and have children. But we're GERMAN and SCOTTISH and no, no one has ever mentioned it before that we all have red hair so you are providing me with extremely valuable information.

2. My complete lack of desire to respond to the question "How old is he?" from other parents of young children given that right now, the second most popular topic after his hair color is his extremely articulate speech, and it makes other parents act like their two year old is somehow defective - because you know, Boy Detective was walking independently at nine months and now all the other two year olds are still not as good at walking as he is. Oh, except hang on, they're all walking the same now and have been for quite some time. And my kid barks out the window when he sees a dog walking down the street, so you might want to factor that in.

3. The pressure of continually defending to friends and family my complete lack of desire to make floral bloomers or bonnets or whatever and cover them with ruffles and gathers and smocking.

Thank you, universe, for not sending me a girl baby. I can only handle so much.

The Princess: He had falafel?

C-Man: A little taste. Really he had a lot of cheese. He wanted BIG pieces.

The Princess: Maybe we should communicate better among all the adults so we actually know what he's had during the day. Imagine if he had that much cheese at every meal today and we're not offering him anything else.

C-Man: Look, he didn't eat the whole [apple] pie [that my mom made], that's all I'm saying.

The Princess: He couldn't have eaten the whole pie.

C-Man: Dude, he totally could have, you weren't there. He was using his 18 charisma to get that pie.

In This is what happens when you homeschool, I shared a snippet from a devoted reader of Flooded Lizard Kingdom about a crisis in children's literature. This reader has decided to become a guest blogger here, so I present her first post. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

I let my children pick out their own books from the local library. I often detest what they pick because they [the books] are stupid or pointless or bad art or whatever. However, I feel they should have some control of expressing and investigating their own interests or even realizing that a great cover of a book does not necessarily mean a great book. At least I hope they figure that out some day.

Parker is a prime offender of the "books I hate" pickage. Actually, so is Posey and the only reason Fay doesn't is that she doesn't pick out picture books anymore. The other day, Parker picked out a book called Tail End Charlie. I didn't even read it through before he took it home. I usually figure there are worse things in the world than reading a bad book. Sometimes, I page through them while they're sitting on the floor and turn them in before we even read them.

Not this time. I just didn't get to it.

I started reading the book to him the other day. It had something to do with the RAF and, frankly, made little to no sense to me and I didn't think it would to any 5 year old. I asked him if it was interesting or if he was paying attention and he assured me he was.

Whatever.

I only read half because it was one of those evil books with way too many words and comic book like inserts with captions. So Henry [dad] was picked to finish reading it to him as a bedtime story the next night.

Henry also hated the book (he didn't like the comic book font) but kept reading. He then got to the line "They found me in a pool of blood".

It even had a picture (comic book style). This is a child's picture book! It wasn't in the older kid section or the non-fiction section or anything. It was in the little kids/parents read to them section!

The worst part was... I couldn't stop laughing. I don't know if I was laughing at the absurdity of this book in general or this line in a children's book or what. Whatever it was, I laughed so hard, I cried. I couldn't even talk.

And, due to my reaction, my children now think this particular line is the funniest thing they've ever heard. They commonly throw it out at random times and giggle and laugh hysterically. At least they weren't traumatized. Until they realize what I was laughing about.

And to continue! Here was Henry's favorite part. After the pool of blood (he was patched up), he met someone and it was love at first sight. And then "but that's another story." Hell, I'm not checking that one out! Who knows what might be in there?

Parker was looking at the wedding picture in the book. He mistook bridesmaids for additional brides and is now convinced that this bloody man (okay, he didn't say that) married three women at the same time.

In short, despite the fun family moments this book inspired, I suggest you avoid it. Unless they make it into a board book.

Editor's Note: And how would that make it better, exactly?

Directions: Choose the word that most appropriately follows the phrase.

"What's up..."

a) Baby duck
b) Babycup
c) Buttercup
d) Any of the above.

[Updated to add: This post seemed a lot clearer in my head. Boy Detective would answer d, apparently.]

The Princess: it's 2:15 and he's awake

The Princess: WHY DON'T WE HAVE MORE CUPCAKES?

C-Man: I COULD GET YOU SOME

C-Man: OR SOME CHAMPAGNE

The Princess: OH MY GOD HE BETTER GO TO BED EARLY TONIGHT IS ALL I'M SAYIN'

The Princess: ESPECIALLY BECAUSE HE REFUSES TO EAT ANYTHING BUT RASPBERRIES

The Princess: not that i can really blame him on that one

I have a good number of great acquaintances here in Austin, but the number of people I would call close friends has been dwindling lately. C-Man has no friends here, so he's no help in broadening our social circle. I could take more initiative in developing some of the local friendships I have into something deeper, I admit that. It's just that all the people I know in town live so damn far away. I'm still not happy that my house is located such that every trip away from home involves getting in a car, and I'm still not that comfortable driving at night, so the thought of putting energy into seeing people more often who live half an hour away is somewhat tiring no matter how fabulous they are (which they are).

The obvious suggestion for the mother of a two year old is "make some mom friends in your neighborhood." This is often phrased as "join a Mom group!"

It's not that I don't want to HAVE mom friends. I already have some friends who happen to be moms, and they are perfectly nice people. I just don't want to MAKE mom friends.

Making "mom friends," you see, always starts with talking about the kids. Of course that makes total sense, it's a subject you have in common. But often, these conversations are not actually conversations. The people involved are not listening to each other. They're just waiting for their turn to tell the parallel anecdote or fact about their own child.

"When did he start walking?"

"Nine months."

"She walked at ten months."

"When did she start sleeping through the night?"

"Eighteen months."

Etc.

Or maybe I'm just a bad conversationalist.

Even when it's non-competitive, this is a kind of small talk that I can't STAND. I talk about my kid all day with his grandmother and then again when his dad gets home. Talking to other adults is supposed to be my escape! I don't mind having Boy Detective come up occasionally in a larger conversation, but the parade of "what the kid is like" and "what my pregnancy was like" is getting old. Yet I do it, even when I don't want to, because it's safe and convenient and makes me fit in. At the park, I almost feel like it would be considered bad manners to do anything else. It really seems to be a community norm.

(Honestly, a while back when we ran into our neighbors down the street and spent most of the conversation talking about their foundation repair, EVEN THOUGH WE BOTH HAVE KIDS, I was ecstatic. That's how much I miss talking to adults about non-kid things.)

So what's a girl to do? How does one meet new people without boring oneself (and them) to tears if those other people happen to also have children?

I have received a comment that I feel the need to address, related to the post in which I disclosed that Boy Detective was sleeping away from home for the first time:

You need to follow up here...what happened? And, by the way, I believe this is the first time I have ever read your blog. I can't promise I will again...

I'm not sure where this commenter gets off demanding specific content when she states that she will likely never patronize the blog again. However, it was a mildly interesting episode and one I did not blog about on the kiddo's own blog, so I will comply.

Boy Detective's grandmother had just finished a successful afternoon babysitting shift that allowed me and C-Man to get away from our no-nap-today progeny for a few hours. I don't even remember what we did. Whatever it was, we were still both pretty drained when it came time for us to take back our child care responsibilities for the evening. So my MIL said "Why don't I take him to my house? Boy Detective, do you want to have a sleepover at Grandma's house?"

Grandma's house, you must know, is the epicenter of all Good Things. Blueberry pancakes, finger paint, tubs of toys, two pet cats, and most importantly Aunt FrogPrincess (no relation to yours truly except by marriage). Oh, how this boy loves his Aunt FrogPrincess. So once he has been asked if he wants to go to Grandma's house, it's going to take some work to pry him off the idea, no matter how freaked out Mommy is feeling about the whole thing.

It's not like I thought anything horrible would happen, because there are enough adult drivers involved to transport the child back home at any hour of the night if it all goes horribly wrong. But I don't think he has a clue what "sleepover" means, so this does not qualify as informed consent. I also don't like to be rushed into making decisions, and suddenly I had Boy Detective yelling "Go to Grandma's house" and MIL saying "It's going to be so much fun!" and C-Man saying "Sure, why not, where's the pack and play?"

When we couldn't find the pack and play sheet, I was relieved.

Then C-Man kept looking and looking and I was so annoyed that I had not put it away properly and then lo and behold he found it. I felt like I was being pushed along by a train and so I packed up a diaper bag and sent them on their way.

C-Man and I walked down to the Whip In, the nearby liquor store that was actually a liquor store when I lived right behind it in 1996. Now it's added a seating area, a selection of hippie groceries, and you can get Indian food. Their slogan is "Namaste Y'all" and I think that just about sums it up. We came home with treats and watched The Fall, a movie which was very lovely to look at but way too depressing. It was really nice to be able to watch a movie while sitting on my own couch and turn the volume up to a level where I could actually hear the dialogue. Most of the time, these days, we turn subtitles on.

By the end of the movie, though, I was regretting having sent Boy Detective over to his grandmother's. I did not have enough time to think about it, I haven't been over to her house in a long time so I have no mental picture of where he's sleeping, and I just feel icky about the whole thing. By this time, it's about 9:30 p.m. C-Man asks if I want to call over there, but I don't want to call in the middle of MIL trying to put him to sleep. His bedtime is around 8 p.m. usually but when she babysits over here, he has often managed to play her like a cheap violin and wrangle far more songs, backrubs, stuffed animals in the bed, bottles of milk, and various other delights than his parents would ever provide.

Which is what grandmas are for.

I finally said yes, call on the cell phone. No answer. We get a call back. He is not asleep. He is bouncing around in his pack and play getting Aunt FrogPrincess to sing to him about elephants. Grandma is ASLEEP. Aunt FrogPrincess is trying to put him to sleep by herself, despite never having done it before. And she has not given him his pacifier, without which the child has not gone to sleep since he started not falling asleep while nursing.

The phrase "WHAT KIND OF CLOWN SHOW ARE THEY RUNNING OVER THERE?" may or may not have been uttered by me.

Within the next few minutes, the following happened:

1. Aunt FrogPrincess was instructed to bring him back if he was not asleep at 10:00.
2. She woke up Grandma, who had apparently fallen asleep in the dark room with the pack and play while keeping Boy Detective company as he was supposedly falling asleep.
3. Pacifier was located, since it had been packed IN THE SAME ZIPLOC BAG AS THE BOTTLE THEY GAVE HIM HIS MILK IN.
4. Grandma called and said everything would be fine now, thanks!
5. Grandma was instructed in no uncertain terms to bring child back NOW.
6. Grandma called back and said that she told Boy Detective his father said he had to go home, to which he strenuously objected because SLEEPOVER WITH AUNT FROGPRINCESS!
7. Grandma replied "But you're not sleeping!"
8. Boy Detective said "SLEEPING!" and lay down and within 2 minutes he was asleep.

Do you believe that last part? 'Cause we're still not sure if we do.

When he arrived back home the next morning, he was pleasant and cheerful despite going to sleep a full two hours later than normal. He didn't even take an overly long nap.

Do you know what I spent all day thinking?

OH MY GOD MY TWO YEAR OLD IS GOING TO START STAYING UP UNTIL 10:00 AT NIGHT AND MY LIFE IS OVER!

But it did not happen.

So that, my friends, is the rest of the story. I hope my little sister who never reads my blog is happy now.

Watching my husband, still in his work clothes, sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Park"...

with an empty laundry bakset upside down on his head.

I don't think that would have happened without us having a kid.