Recently in Kid(s) Category

Friends, I have a confession to make.

Last night I ran the dishwasher when it wasn't completely full.

I used to read the admonishments in crunchy literature about waiting until the dishwasher was full and think "Who would run a dishwasher before it was full? Any why?" I have even used this blog to brag about my dishwasher loading prowess. No mixing bowl was too large, no collection of plates so tightly packed that an additional plate would be left out.

(Mostly because I despise washing dishes by hand.)

(But I don't put things with wood handles in the dishwasher.)

(I think my sister does. She hates washing dishes by hand even more than I do.)

(My sister's insistence on putting everything in the dishwasher drives my mom up the wall.)

Last night, though, I found out exactly why a tofu-eating, Goodwill-shopping, organic-food-buying, Austin-living, non-SUV-driving, meat-avoiding, even-tiny-scrap-of-paper-recycling, formerly-Green-Party-registering, 50-Simple-Things-You-Can-Do-To-Save-The-Earth-buying, upright eco-mama such as myself might run a dishwasher before it was full.

When you only own four stainless steel cups for your kid to drink out of, and he is demanding two cups per meal, and he's almost three so he eats like five meals a day, and you have spent approximately half the day at the kitchen sink washing tiny stainless steel cups (with zebras on the bottom!) by hand?

THAT my friends is when you too might be tempted to run the dishwasher at the end of the day regardless of whether more dishes could conceivably be placed therein.

To you this dishwasher might have looked full. I know better, though. If I had been fortunate enough to have dirtied three additional plates, two small bowls, and half a dozen pieces of flatware yesterday, plus a cake stand or a blender jar or even a measly pie plate, then perhaps I could have been spared this humiliation.

Do you think the Austin hippie police are coming for me now?

Do you think they can be bribed with locally grown pattypan squash? 'Cause hell if I know what to do with that thing.

Me: Boy Detective's fever went away with Tylenol and he is barking like a dog. But he did that before too.

Boss: Croup?

Me: No, actual barking like a dog. Out the window, at passersby.

Boss: OH.

I purchased this book with C-Man's hard earned money and brought it home so I could read it to my two year old son over and over and over because he LOVES it.

Boy Detective: Then I goed into the back yard.

The Princess: You went into the back yard?

Boy Detective: Yeah I goed into the back yard.

The Princess: You WENT into the back yard?

Boy Detective: Actually I think it was GOED!

My husband is one of the only people on the planet whom I could talk with for about 100 years without getting bored. He is out of the house between 8:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. every weekday doing something that I call "paying the mortgage and providing health insurance." These weighty resonsibilities preclude him from checking his personal email all day long to see if I have sent him yet another shocking bit of information about Wolverine copied off Wikipedia, chatting on the phone with me for half an hour about what color we would theoretically paint our bedroom, etc. So by the time he gets home for dinner, I am quite pleased to see him and would like nothing better than to immediately engage in at least an hour of talking about these important topics.

That worked fine until we had a two year old.

When Boy Detective was born, many things I had taken for granted disappeared. The ability to control my physical boundaries - a.k.a. keep people from touching me when I feel like it - and the ability to control my schedule would be included on that list. I wasn't prepared for those changes, and I'm definitely not prepared for completely losing the ability to talk to C-Man about anything substantial between when he gets home from work and when Boy Detective is in bed.

If we try to discuss anything substantial, Boy Detective starts yelling. Deliberately. To drown us out. He even says "Stop talking! I want you to stop talking!"

When C-Man asks him what he would like to talk about instead, it's the same answer every time: "I want to talk about rocks."

The entire content he wishes to contribute about rocks is this: "I dig them out of the ground."

I just want to put my head down on the dinner table and cry.

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?