I know it’s been awhile since my last post. I am not happy about it and am currently failing at time allocation. Summer time for me used to mean time off, warm weather, beer drinking, and body relaxing. Not anymore. Now, summer time for me means even MORE work, book work, class teaching, butt wiping (my kids’, not my own. Gross, you sicko), macaroni and cheese making, and email answering. I am not complaining, I love what I do (most of the time) but I DO believe it is taking a hard, grey-haired toll on my used-to-be-youthful 30-year-old body. I mean, I NEVER get I.D.ed anymore when I am purchasing my much-needed adult beverages. NEVER. I used to have my I.D. out and ready to go when I got to the cashier. Now, if I even start to pull it out, they giggle and use their best “shoo”ing hands to indicate that the I.D. is not necessary and can make it’s way back in to my old-a** wallet. I mean, for real. I recently went to the best grocery store on the planet, HyVee (shameless plug, I know. I regret nothing), and unloaded some beer and wine on to the conveyor belt. With my head still down towards the cart, I kept unloading food and random crap that I grabbed in the heat of a donut-loving-moment, without looking up or making any eye contact with the cashier. I could tell that he was hesitating and had not yet scanned my alcohol, he was waiting for me to look up first. This got me excited. I thought to myself, “FINALLY! Someone who sees through my new-found wrinkles and sprouting grey hairs and recognizes that I am NOT decrepit and he shall ask for my I.D.!” So, like a giddy school girl, I decided to end his hesitation and I grabbed my purse from the cart in anticipation. I turned to look at the cashier (who was damn near my age, none-the-less) and we finally locked eyes. We locked eyes JUST LONG ENOUGH so that this little a**-bag cashier could quickly reply “OH! (::giggles:: )Nevermind, you are fine.” He then quickly typed a bogus birthdate, which I can only assume was 01-01-1910, in to the computer and scanned the beer without any further hesitation or morsel of though.

“OH! Nevermind, you are fine.” Meaning: woah nelly, the back of your head looks way younger than the front.

What….the….actual…..F.

Thanks a lot, “Cody-the-middle-aged-Cashier”. You just ruined my life. 

So… now that you have wasted 3 minutes of your life reading my whines about my  lack of youthful beauty, I will get back to my original point: I am a busy mother trucker. And now I am thinking, “What the frick did I spend all this hard-earned money on a real-life website for if I wasn’t going to update it more than once a month?” Well, I prefer “quality” over “quantity”. I would rather REALLY have my thoughts gathered and a good story line set before I update so that no one wastes their precious time reading the random, everyday events of me at HyVee (shameless plug #2. NO RAGRETS!)

But, when I need new material, I can always count on my weirdo daughter to pull through with the penis jokes. That’s right, you read me, PENIS JOKES. Dear Lord, she figured out what a penis is. Sort of. Not really. Well….let’s just say she’s on the right track and I’m terrified. 

Ever since the birth of Leyton, Everlee has had slightly more body awareness. During his newborn and infant stages, she really didn’t want anything to do with the changing of a diaper and was therefore clueless on the differences in anatomy. Once she heard the quintessential “RIIIIIPP” of the velcro diaper tabs, those little legs went scrambling as far away from the “gross, stinky, yucky poop” as they could. I’m not gonna lie…with the way this boy loves to eat, I usually wanted to go a-runnin’ with her. But I am the Mom, and he sure can’t wipe his own a**, so I digress.

That is, up until recently.

Recently, Everlee has decided to be more helpful with Leyton. 

She has decided that, most of the time, he is NOT the devil incarnate and she ACTUALLY likes him. She simply got smarter with her diaper-time interactions. She started standing outside of the nursery doorway and yelling (yes, YELLING. Anyone that knows Ev knows that this is her only volume.) “MOM! Is it poop or pee?”If the answer was poop, sayonara suckers. She gone. (CONFESSION: sometimes, when I really just don’t have the energy for both kids to be punching each other while I wipe bodily excretions from a tiny human, then I would say “poop” even if it wasn’t just so she would stay in the hallway and let me wipe the tiny tush in peace. NO REGRETS.)  If the answer was pee, she decided it was safe enough to enter the doorway. And with that, came the sloooooow walk towards the location of the boy and the slooooooooow peek of the giant blue eyes over the changing table during a routine diaper change. And then BAM! Her first inquiry about his “parts” and my first parental anatomy obligation. I REALLY was hoping this would wait until she was 25…

“Hey, Mom. What’s that?”

Me (getting nervous and sweaty and knowing EXACTLY what she was referring to): “What’s what, Ev?”

“That!” ::points to Leyton’s opened diaper::

“Well…that’s his penis.”

“His WHAT?”

“His penis.”

“His ‘pernish’?”

“Penis.”

“Peanut?”

“PENIS.”

“Parsnip?!”

“PENIS! IT’S HIS PENIS!”

“OOOOHHH, PEEEEEENIS!”

::::::places finger under her chin and sits in long, contemplative thought ::::::

“Nope, you’re wrong Mom. That’s his PACIFIER!”

:::insert giggles that I simply could not hold back::: “They only wish, hunny.”

Was my response appropriate? No. Was it HILARIOUS? Yup. You bet your bottom dollar that I laughed about that interaction for quite awhile. Ever since that first introduction to the difference in bodies, Everlee has been very inquisitive and I try my BEST to answer her maturely and honestly.

---

“Mom, if Leyton has a pernish, what do I have?”

“A vagina.”

“A vagina?! Ah, yes, a vagina. Mine is all up inside and Leyton’s is all stuck outside and weird.”

“You’re exactly right.”

---

“Mom, do YOU have a parsnip or a vagina?”

“I have a vagina, Everlee.”

“Oh, do girls have vaginas and boys have parsnips?!”

“For the most part, yes. There is some grey area, but we will cover that when you are a little older.”

“OOOOOH, OK. So YOU are a girl.”

“Yep.”

“And I am a girl.”

“Yep.”

“And Leyton is a BOY.”

“Yep.”

“And DADDY is a dog.”

“Correct.”

---

“Mom, if boys have pernishes and no vaginas, how do they go pee?!”

“They pee from their penis.”

“UUUGGGHH, THAT’S NASTY!”

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“Mom! We HAVE to take a bath tonight otherwise my butt in the front will start to stick out like Leytons!!”

“What makes you think that if you don’t take a bath then you will grow a penis?!”

“Because, MOM! Boys are dirty and BEE-SCUSTING and THAT’S why their p-p-pernises stick out!”

---

The inquisitive minds of the young are endearing. Hilarious and endearing. And while I am happy that she is smart, in tune to the differences in the world, and comfortable enough to talk to me about it, I am scared to death to send her to preschool at the local church in the coming weeks. I CAN’T WAIT to see the notes that come home about her lack of mouth filter (stay tuned for the future blog posts on that one). She comes by it honestly, but we are working on that.

And while most of the questions are legit and very fitting of the mental capacity of a 3, almost 4, year old; I am slightly concerned that I overheard her, standing fully clothed in front of the bathroom mirror repeating “vagina, vagina, vagina” over and over again. All while making a different crazy face during each successive “vagina” chant. I think we might need a professional to handle that one, I wasn’t aware that parenting was so awkward and I’m ill-equipped for vagina chants. And when she is 20 and reading all of these highly personal quotes that are archived right here on the interweb, I will remind her that she once stripped down naked, opened the front window, and yelled “POOPY PENIS” as loud as she could right as the neighbors walked by. Payback is a fickle biotch, baby girl.