May I Borrow a Cup of Sugar?

As our little family walked in the door last night after running a couple of quick errands, one of the men that currently lives in the rental property a couple of doors down called up to my husband from his porch. He wanted to know if Sean smoked; apparently he was trying to bum a cigarette.

I have never smoked and my husband quit shortly after he expressed an interest in dating me because every thing about it just turns my stomach. One or two of my friends smoke, but I don’t generally go around kissing them and they don’t live in my house: so besides the fact that I love them very much and want them to live long and healthy lives, I can handle it.

Now I understand that bumming cigarettes is a relatively normal practice among people who smoke. Perhaps it is just because I am not a member of that social group and am therefore ignorant on what is deemed acceptable, but something in or about my sense of propriety finds it highly offensive to go around asking people, especially people you don’t know, for little rolls of expensive white paper to light on fire.

I don’t go around asking, “Hey, do you eat? Can you make me a piece of toast?”

Or, “Do you like chocolate? Mind if I have a nibble?”

Seriously. People would look at me like I had two heads. Better yet, “Do you have a vehicle? Great! I’m just going to siphon off a couple of gallons.”

A Baby by Any Other Name Would Look/Taste/Smell as Sweet

So, here we are with a mere two months to go before this sweet little ninja in my belly makes its arrival. If this hard punching, swift kicking child is female in nature she may not have a name until she is twelve years old. Dear old Dad and dear old Mum just can’t seem to find a one.

In all fairness that may be because my tolerance level for endless name-book perusal is pretty minimal. After about the first two hundred names my eyes start to water and a sensation not unlike vomit-inducing nausea begins to well up in my gut. My husband, on the other hand, can find lots of names he wouldn’t mind slapping on some poor innocent, unsuspecting child. (In other words, I think that some of them are a bit queer).

This is one argument some people would use to encourage certain unwilling parents to find out the gender of their unborn munchkin. I don’t think that would help us much: if it’s a boy then we don’t have to worry about picking a name; if it’s a girl then it doesn’t much change the fact that we still can’t seem to agree on a name. How do people with eight children pick out names? That’s what I’d like to know.

We didn’t have this trouble when it came to naming our cats. It generally takes about one day to name a pet. And ours even have middle names, although those didn’t get tacked on until a bit later, when they started to misbehave. I find it much easier to shout at something with two names.

In my sweet pregnant stupor I really believe this baby will be a boy. There are some things a person just doesn’t mind being wrong about, so if it is a girl I’m just trusting that the right name will come along in time. Besides, I’m already starting to mix up the kids’ names when trying to untangle their little intertwined arms during a brutal tug-of-war with a favorite toy and they’re not even the same gender. In all likelihood the new baby will end up as “hey you!” anyway.

Beware of Harmless Questions

There is a spot in my chest that trills with fear whenever someone asks my son, “how are you?” When he was a little younger he would reply something like, “I’m two,” and I could totally deal with the cuteness. Now I just haven’t a clue what his response is going to be, and I’m the type of person who is generally not fond of surprises.

Last week at the doctor’s office when the nurse inquired after his health, “Gloppity-glop,” was his response. Had I not known that he picked up this phrase (and many others) from Dr. Seuss, I may have been a bit concerned as gloppity-glop sounds like it might be catching. I do a lot of smiling and patting him on the head when we’re out in public. Thankfully he hasn’t said anything bad or inappropriate. Yet.

Quirky phrases and odd quotes I can live with. However, some of his responses make me yearn for the days when he would hide behind my legs if a stranger addressed him. “Miff muffered moof” doesn’t sound so rude, but I could definitely live without his desire to wow the world with his facial muscle contortion control.

There have been times when a polite greeting has been returned with a roll of the eyes into the back of the head and a fantastical tongue lolling instead of a sweet blue-eyed toddler smile. I frequently find myself hoping that the recipient whose benign question elicited such a response has raised boys, or at least some sort of child who was once three-years-old.

As if these things aren’t enough to make a mother ill at ease, there is another charming habit he’s picked up that should really be exercised only at home. After a few minutes of watching Daddy play some Zelda video games, the little man became magically adept at reproducing the sounds of the main character, Link, attacking his foes and jumping off of high places in a single bound. The child now trots about (literally trots) whilst shouting a guttural “heeeeyyy-hey!” and whacking the furniture with a plastic golf club.

Aside from the furniture beating, the whole act is really rather cute. Inside. When taken outside I’m sure the entire block thinks he’s being forced to do something against his rather strong will, or he’s just being very rude and angry with mommy. It’s even better when he takes up his attack stance in a physician’s office or grocery store. This type of behavior tends to startle people. Perhaps I should set aside five minutes every day to indoctrinate about the proper way to greet people; especially people we don’t know.

Pumpkin the Knight

Much to the chagrin of my husband, our daughter has taken possession of one of her brother’s PlayMobil knights. She hugs him and pets him and calls him “Pumpkin”. Previously, her Bubby had named the black knight “Link” (from the Zelda video games), but she has totally disregarded this and persists in calling the little stiff plastic axe-wielder Pumpkin.

I think it’s cute. She points to his molded plastic toushy and declares his diaper clean; she sings “Rock-a-bye Baby” to him. Daddy finds this whole routine appalling. He seems concerned about what it will do to Pumpkin’s self-esteem. I’m betting Pumpkin’s self-esteem is about as immovable as his tiny plastic ankles.

Cows on the Brain

Ever since the birthday party at the farm, my daughter has been more than usually obsessed with cows. If the family is out for one of our weekend rambling drives in the nearby almost-country, she sits in her car seat, which is still rear-facing because she’s such a peanut, points toward things she can’t even see and says “look at the COWS!”

One of our local zoos gives mommies free admission on Mother’s Day and we have made it a tradition to spend a few hours there watching the animals laze around in the sun or walk circles around the little outbuildings in their enclosure. This year everything was proclaimed a cow, from the zebra to the camel. A gentle correction of “no, honey, that’s an ibex” would elicit an “it’s an ibex” and a pointed index finger from the sweetie pie; but as we walked away “bye cows!” was the inevitable refrain. I believe the peacock escaped this label due to his bright blue and green feathers.

In the evenings after Daddy comes home from work it is common practice for him to enquire after our doings during the day. My answer generally follows along the lines of dishes, laundry, errands, and random other mundane household type chores, with a bit of sewing/designing and some fun playtime with the kids thrown in. Pretty predictable.

When my son’s turn comes he gets animated, stammers a lot, and tends to tell exciting stories from the previous week that are still fresh in his memory. Unless of course we happened to go to the post office or grocery store: then he tells dear old dad all about the great fun we had buying milk and bread. I’m a stay-at-home mom in the truest sense of the word, so the kiddos get pretty amped up for the weekly trip to buy fruit and veggies; even a visit to the doctor’s office is met with enthusiasm as long as no shots are involved. Not that we stay home all the time, I’m just not an on-the-go kind of person.

Usually the little girl takes cues from her brother and repeats snippets of his dialogue, shows off her baby doll, or starts in with patty-cake. However, the other night when her turn rolled around, our daughter managed a remarkably articulate response when the question was put to her. When asked, “what did you do today?” she replied in a very cool and collected tone, “I looked for cows.”

Stackable Babies

We're wondering how a to fit a third sweet-cheeked little baby into our home. Perhaps if we can only get the existing children to sleep like this we may be able to conserve some space...

Say Hello, Optimus

Getting new underwear is exciting. In recent weeks I've begun to wonder if buying plain old boring white underpants for little people isn't better than the fun Spider-Man and Transformers underwear.

With a certain young man continuing to get bigger around here there arose a need for some larger underpants. When the old ones started to leave nasty looking elastic marks around my son's entire midsection I decided that it had been put off long enough; trying to force your child to stay little and stop growing doesn't work, it just leaves marks. During one of my few and far between trips to Walmart I grabbed a package of cool looking Transformers undies. The little man approved my selection with fervor and asked to wear them every five minutes until I managed to wash them in preparation for his tiny heiney.

Shortly after Optimus Prime made the trek from dryer to top drawer Nana got a surprise unveiling when the child removed his pants in order to show her his new prized possession. Woohoo! Really, that's not so bad and we got a good laugh out of it. I mean, what nana wouldn't want to see Bumblebee plastered across her grandson's rear end?

Last week he picked out Spider-Man underwear at the store. The same excitement went along with this purchase, and there was no peace in this house until Peter Parker and his spidey suit went through a wash and dry cycle. Thankfully no inappropriate strip tease followed the donning of these underpants. We did, however, find ourselves telling the checkout lady at Target all about them yesterday.

She was a sweet soul and seemed just as thrilled about the underwear as my son was. It's been so long since I've had new underwear that when I finally do get some I might feel compelled to tell complete strangers about them too.