RANDOM THINGS THE KIDS HAVE DONE THIS WEEK MONTH:

A week or so ago, James and I were cleaning out our guest room really thoroughly (getting this house ready to put on the market!) and the kids were also supposed to be cleaning their rooms.

We were all working pretty hard, when Ethan came in, toting a nerf gun, and announced, “When we’re done with all this work, I suggest we have the BATTLE OF OUR LIVES.”

Nerf gun battles abound at our house. We agreed that sounded like a fantastic idea.

LAST MINUTE PARENTING WINS THE DAY

Today is Dr. Suess’ birthday, and our school is honoring it with a book character dress up day. I didn’t remember until late last night, so this morning was fraught with quickly trying to come up with SOMEthing, ANYthing, for the kids to dress up with.

Jocelyn was easy — we had a pair of Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts that Ethan insisted on getting last year. Today, she went as Thing 1 (well, Thing 1, with normal hair, a pink skirt, and stripey tights.)

However, I did come up with (what I thought was) an INGENIOUS idea — I also took a marker, made a STAR on her tummy (on her skin) and said, “Now you’re a SUPER SECRET SNEETCH, with a STAR upon THARS.”

She was tickled to death!

Ethan was harder. Of course, he wanted to dress up as a Star Wars clone trooper, one of his many halloween costumes. We adamantly said NO — it’s BOOK character dress up, not MOVIE character dress up. He pointedly held up his huge stacks of Star Wars books, but we (OK it was James mostly) stuck to our (his) guns. No Star Wars. — A big reason is, we were pretty sure that wearing a clone trooper uniform all day may cause him to ACT like a clone trooper all day, and his teacher doesn’t need to deal with THAT.

All the things Ethan did NOT agree to dressing up as:

– A secret sneetch (aw MAN! can’t he see my BRILLIANCE?)
– Harry the Horrible
– Nate the Great
– Someone from the Magic School Bus books
– Ralph S. Mouse (a bicycle helmet, a little marker for whiskers, DONE)
– Captain Underpants (“COME ON MOM YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!”)
– One of the kids from Captain Underpants
– The Wimpy Kid (this one would have been hard, but he does have a promotional wimpy kid tshirt kicking around somewhere)

He finally decided on Max from Where the Wild Things Are. He wore red footed jammies to school, with cars on them — despite the fact that Max’s were plain red with a hood with monsterness on it.

Oh well!

I can’t wait to hear how it all went.

WHO KNEW THE BIRDS AND THE BEES WERE SO DAMNED AMUSING

These kids have been into baby stuff for a while – hearing the story of their own birth, hearing about how they would KICK me when I was pregnant, and they just love babies in general. Babies, puppies, kitties, bears, squirrels… baby ANYTHING. Ethan is studying all about autobiographies in school right now, so not only is he interested babies, but he is doing assignments about himself – relate a story about when he was a baby, how much he weighed, where was he born, etc.

So about a month ago, I got them this book: It’s NOT the Stork! — figuring if they were so interested, we might as well give them plenty of real information on the subject, and save us the hassle of having “the talk” with them as teens or preteens. I really like this book, it’s full of good information, differences between boys and girls – inside and out, different kinds of families, how babies are made, and has also helped put to rest some myths that I’m not certain have REALLY been laid to rest in this house: the fact that babies AREN’T in the mom’s STOMACH, and (here’s a rumor that Jocelyn clung to when she was a wee toddler,) the myth that babies are POOPED OUT when they are born.

It’s a fairly large book, with a lot of info in it, and generally they’ve kind of skipped around, settling on the parts they want to read. The pages where the sperm swim to get to the egg is a favorite, due to the cartoon characters – “hey its’ this way!” “We’ve been swimming forever!” etc. but the part that all parents dread talking to their kids about, has not really been hit on much with my kids with all their flipping through this book.

Until last night.

Ethan is our non-fiction guy, he loves to read about facts and science, so it’s been his favorite lately. He settled down with it and flipped to the pages with the sperm swimming to the egg pages, when he said, “But how does the sperm GET INTO the vagina?”

I just quietly flipped back a page or two where it covers this, and he started reading aloud. When he got to.. *ahem* the pertinent details, he stopped DEAD, looking totally AGHAST, turned and looked at me, while I sat there completely beet red. Then hollered to Jocelyn, who was sitting on the floor reading her own book to herself.

“JOCELYN! You have GOT TO HEAR THIS! The daddy puts his PENIS inside the mommy’s VAGINA!!”

They both thought it was the most hilarious and RIDICULOUS thing in the world.

It is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

After the laughter and giggling died down — I told them that I’m glad they are learning so much about babies, but that it would NOT be appropriate to talk about this kind of stuff at school. They both nodded and laughed some more.

So! It’s especially interesting that Ethan’s teacher told James this story about Ethan in school yesterday!

His class were writing up their own autobiographical information, and Ethan got to a part where he was supposed to put down how much he weighed as a newborn, in a complete sentence. He raised his hand and the teacher came over, and Ethan whispered to him, “Is it OK if I write uterus?”

He had taken my warning to heart and was concerned about being inappropriate!

WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT, KILN FIRED PLACENTA PLEASE!

Because I’m a masochistic sadist (i don’t know which is which term means what so I’m using both) I made a google alert for “used paragon kiln for sale”. So anytime google finds a hit for that search term, it emails me. Then I can get excited before remembering that a) we’re moving and big kiln purchases, however used and cheap they may be, are not a good idea, and b) i shouldn’t be buying a kiln anyway, remember that casting kit you got amy? the one you haven’t even used once yet? how about you try THAT out before spending over $500 bucks on a kiln, hmmmm??? See — I like to torture myself with emails about what I want to buy before I tell myself I can’t buy it.

Well, sadly, my used kiln google alert pretty much just turns up links to a lot of spam, which I delete and move on. Lately, my hopes don’t even get that temporary rise when I see the subject of the email.

It used to go like this:

subject: Google Alert – used paragon kiln for sale

amy: (oh. OH! maybe this is it! maybe there’s a kiln for sale somewhere that is priced so low, i can buy it and not feel guilty!)

-click open email-

amy: (god damn “Allen heath gl2400 service manual used paragon gl24 kiln for sale bigger dick.” F**k you.

~fini~

This time though, I was slightly amused that this bout of spam google found for me included “sacred fist,” “placenta,” as well as “used kiln” in all the jumble of words-trying-to-catch-the-google-search. Maybe the spammer bot was trying to lure some pagan native american home birthing new mommies who needed a used kiln to make their sacred fist placenta new moon life fajitas with.

THAT IS ENOUGH FROM YOU, MADAM!

And with kiln fired placenta fajitas, I shall bid you adieu.

– Amy

(LOOKIT THAT I DIDN’T SAY A WORD ABOUT JEWELRY!)

(THAT KILN SPAM STORY TOTALLY DOESN’T COUNT)