"Mamãe, do boy humans have babies in their tummies, too?" my four-year-old wanted to know.
"No, sweetie, just girl humans."
"Why?"
"Girl humans have something called a uterus, which is the only place a human can grow and bake just like I baked you guys."
"In the ocean, boy seahorses can have babies in their tummies."
Maybe that's what saves their marriages, I thought to myself.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
2.13.2011
2.07.2011
Dick Cheney Spoils Another Innocent Moment
How many times a month do I put the boys in the bathtub, throw some toys at them, and go make dinner, or clean up, or scrape Fruit Leather off the piano keys? Often enough to have settled into a kind of secure complacency about the games and water play that go on. Their bath time is usually an opportunity to soak each other; create faces on the tile walls with the foam eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and hair pieces we've collected from the various TubTime sets; and make shampoo faux-hawks.
While there is the mundane bickering (both boys) and occasional crying fits (Dash) because of some vile offense like a misappropriated car or intentionally-ruined tile-wall foam-face, a former oeuvre d'art which now looks like something Picasso created while high on smack, there has never been a moment when I have worried about one of the boys doing serious, blood-shedding, scarring damage to the other.
Until this past Wednesday night.
When the following exchange came floating out from the bathroom, hitting my ears and making the hairs on the back of my neck (admittedly more copious in my current pregnant state) stand up as if Glenn Beck himself had walked through my door and announced he was my long-lost cousin.
You've never seen a gestating woman get so fast from the living room to the bathroom, where the boys were in the tub. Anything beyond a slow amble is quite a feat when you can barely see your toes beyond the protrusion of womb-engorged belly in front of you, so the veritable bounds I managed were quite miraculous, even if they did make me look like a mutant platypus on the run.
In the split second it took to react, I was, of course, imagining little-brother-torture; I was already trying to remember my CPR class; and I was picturing my four-year-old sputtering to life as I held his limp body. All the while, I was screaming (in my head) at my eight-year-old, and already having him admitted to a juvenile delinquent program, making tragic weekend visits to see him at some sterile facility where they were trying to scrub Dick Cheney's torture memos from his young brain.
Turns out, of course, that Waterboarding, in the sweet, play-based world my spawn have created, means NOT to drown one another while forcing confessions of hijacked Legos or swiping an extra cookie or two. Rather, it means taking the big plastic lid from the bin we use to hold cleaning supplies, laying it at the bottom of the tub, under the water, and surfboarding on top of it.
Maybe my boys should be the interrogation experts for the CIA.
I bet you'd get a lot more out of someone while enjoying some Hang Ten time, than from pretending like they were about to enjoy their last breath of oxygen.
I'm just saying.
While there is the mundane bickering (both boys) and occasional crying fits (Dash) because of some vile offense like a misappropriated car or intentionally-ruined tile-wall foam-face, a former oeuvre d'art which now looks like something Picasso created while high on smack, there has never been a moment when I have worried about one of the boys doing serious, blood-shedding, scarring damage to the other.
Until this past Wednesday night.
When the following exchange came floating out from the bathroom, hitting my ears and making the hairs on the back of my neck (admittedly more copious in my current pregnant state) stand up as if Glenn Beck himself had walked through my door and announced he was my long-lost cousin.
"Wanna play Waterboarding, Dashie?"
"Sure!"
You've never seen a gestating woman get so fast from the living room to the bathroom, where the boys were in the tub. Anything beyond a slow amble is quite a feat when you can barely see your toes beyond the protrusion of womb-engorged belly in front of you, so the veritable bounds I managed were quite miraculous, even if they did make me look like a mutant platypus on the run.
In the split second it took to react, I was, of course, imagining little-brother-torture; I was already trying to remember my CPR class; and I was picturing my four-year-old sputtering to life as I held his limp body. All the while, I was screaming (in my head) at my eight-year-old, and already having him admitted to a juvenile delinquent program, making tragic weekend visits to see him at some sterile facility where they were trying to scrub Dick Cheney's torture memos from his young brain.
Turns out, of course, that Waterboarding, in the sweet, play-based world my spawn have created, means NOT to drown one another while forcing confessions of hijacked Legos or swiping an extra cookie or two. Rather, it means taking the big plastic lid from the bin we use to hold cleaning supplies, laying it at the bottom of the tub, under the water, and surfboarding on top of it.
Maybe my boys should be the interrogation experts for the CIA.
I bet you'd get a lot more out of someone while enjoying some Hang Ten time, than from pretending like they were about to enjoy their last breath of oxygen.
I'm just saying.
2.03.2011
Pet Whales and Other Pregnancy Extras
First of all, let's be clear about something: I am thoroughly enjoying this pregnancy right now, having left the dreaded first-trimester fatigue and nausea behind me. I love that my body can do this miraculous thing and bake a real-live, human baby.
THAT SAID...
WTF with the tree trunks that took over my thighs?
Why did I get an invitation to join the Society of People Who Look Like Bosc Pears? (Okay, fine, it was a pre-approved credit card offer - code for Bosc Pear Club!!!)
And I could swear that the person checking me and my friend into the pool the other day for our weekly lap swim wanted to tell my friend that they charge extra for pet whales. Or perhaps it was just that I was having trouble getting through the turnstile and so was projecting?
Oh I know, I should be thankful that I can get pregnant, what with all the women who have trouble with fertility. But let me just be selfish and self-pitying for a minute, okay?
Because I want to know how I'm supposed to sleep when I'm afraid sleeping on my back will suffocate the baby; sleeping on my side makes my neck feel like my hateful neighbor took a hay-yah! to it; and sleeping on my stomach, is, well, impossible - unless I cut a hole in my mattress and through the base of my bed. Which...well...I'm sleep-deprived, so don't put it past me to do just that to my Duxiana bed.
And to top it all off? The internal plumbing is having trouble adjusting to the new tenant, if you know what I mean.
Ah, the sweet flatulence, I mean, elegance and beauty of making babies. And you know what?
I'd do it all again. In a baby's heartbeat.
THAT SAID...
WTF with the tree trunks that took over my thighs?
Why did I get an invitation to join the Society of People Who Look Like Bosc Pears? (Okay, fine, it was a pre-approved credit card offer - code for Bosc Pear Club!!!)
And I could swear that the person checking me and my friend into the pool the other day for our weekly lap swim wanted to tell my friend that they charge extra for pet whales. Or perhaps it was just that I was having trouble getting through the turnstile and so was projecting?
Oh I know, I should be thankful that I can get pregnant, what with all the women who have trouble with fertility. But let me just be selfish and self-pitying for a minute, okay?
Because I want to know how I'm supposed to sleep when I'm afraid sleeping on my back will suffocate the baby; sleeping on my side makes my neck feel like my hateful neighbor took a hay-yah! to it; and sleeping on my stomach, is, well, impossible - unless I cut a hole in my mattress and through the base of my bed. Which...well...I'm sleep-deprived, so don't put it past me to do just that to my Duxiana bed.
And to top it all off? The internal plumbing is having trouble adjusting to the new tenant, if you know what I mean.
Ah, the sweet flatulence, I mean, elegance and beauty of making babies. And you know what?
I'd do it all again. In a baby's heartbeat.
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