Great... I bet Santa Claus is next

I think one of the nicest things about being a parent is being able to see the world through your child's eyes occasionally. Especially when you are stressed about how are we going to pay the bills this month, am I being a good mother, or how am I going to make it through another day without seriously killing someone..... seriously.... one of your kids shares their view of the world and suddenly those worries take back seat for a while and you can just smile.

Ethan and Caleb were playing with these purple satin shoulder wraps that I made for my sisters wedding that they love to use as doll blankets, king robes, sumo wrestling underwear... whatever. Today they were capes. Ethan says to me,

"Mom, I really want to learn how to fly for real"

I smile and think "so cute!" and then have to be the one to break it to him that people can't really fly and the only way we can is on airplanes. My son being the one to have a solution for every problem says

"Superman can fly. I will just learn from him"

Huh. That's a good point. Why do  I have to be the bearer of bad news and tell my wonderfully imaginative son that superman is not real. I might as well smack him across the face. The divvying of the parental responsibilities has gotten a little skewed, I think. David taught him the ABC's, I teach him to pee standing up. David has the cool job at the airport that they like to talk about all day, I destroy his childhood dreams. This kind of sucks. Deep breath....

"Honey, Superman is not really real. He can't really fly. He is just a character that someone made up for pretend."

Look of absolute horror. I hate myself. But after a moment of letting it sink in, his expression suddenly changes to one of hope and excitement. I am confused....

"Wait, Mom.... I know what will fix this"

He runs into the toy room and promptly destroys it from the sound of things and then comes running out with his daddy's old batman cape. Of course, how silly could I be. He just had the wrong cape. Now certainly he can fly. But there is no way in hell I am going to tell him now that Batman couldn't really fly either but rather jumped off tall buildings using grappling hooks and ropes to keep his butt from splatting on the concrete. I'm only going to burst one bubble today

In need of recipe for humble pie

I have extremely intelligent children. I know that, David knows that and anyone who spends five minutes reading my blog knows that. In a world where self esteem is so hard to grasp or have a healthy sense of, I have no problem telling my children just how smart, creative and even good looking they are. This might all come to bite me in the rear one day. Hopefully no worse than this morning.

Ethan: "Mom, do you want to pretend that you are me?"

Me: "Ok... sure...Why am I pretending that I am you?"

Ethan: "So you can be smart"

Me: "But I am your mother. I am smart"

Ethan: "Hmmm.... not as smart as me"

Me: "Really.... OK well, I will pretend to be you and you can pretend to be me and you can do the laundry"

Ethan: "No thank you. Not today"


So he goes into his play room to play and I slink to the bathroom to regroup and give myself the "Yes you are smart, no matter what the four year old says" talk in the mirror, whisper under my breath several "WTF" and silently pray that I am not raising a narcissist. Goal for today...finish the laundry. Goal for tomorrow.... instill sense of humility in child #1

Sonny has got a point

I've been a little bit bad lately about bribing the kids with various things. It's bad I know but I take comfort in the fact that I try to make it somewhat fun or healthy things and not just sugar or crap. Yesterdays "If you relax and stop acting crazy I will...." was watching drill routines of Filipino inmates to soundtracks of various Micheal Jackson songs. Somewhere in my searches on Youtube I came across some music videos of MJ himself and thought that might be fun. Although to be honest the first couple I started, I ended early because there is only so much crouch groping a four and two year old should see. All your judgements aside, I found a few that were just fun. We were watching "They don't really care about us" and it was pretty much MJ just dancing around in a public street. It was one of his later songs though so he looked like.... well the way Micheal Jackson did in his later years. Ethan pipes up with, "Mom is Micheal Jackson a girl?" I of course said that he was a man and to never let your pa hear you say that. He then said "Well, he has long hair and make up on. I think he is a girl" I told him that some boys like to have their hair long and wear make up. He said he thought that was pretty funny and he still thought Micheal was a girl. Kind of made me start thinking. He was a little odd. Maybe he really did turn himself from a black man to a white woman? The things I spend my days pondering really get me wondering if I have anything better to do. In the mean time, the boys and I will enjoy the incarceration practices of the east and eat pop corn while doing so. What will we think about tomorrow?

"So thats why..."

We were walking in the park the other day going for an adventure walk when our latest "line of questioning" occurred. Because my boys are boys, they are inherently fascinated by poop. Who isn't, right? It's because of this that they became the poop patrol on our walk and made sure that no one in our family was going to step on any poo. So every time we saw the left overs from some inconsiderate fur loving friend, they would yell out at the top of their lungs "MOM, DON'T STEP ON THE POO!!" Like I could really miss the huge pile of crap that blocked my way. Well, it just so happened that this particular particulate was on the smaller and rounder end of the turd sizing chart and that struck Ethan as odd. He then proceeded to explain it was because everyone is different and has different shapes of butt holes and that is why their poop is different. Some people have really big butt holes so their poo is really big and some are small so their poo is small. It all made perfect sense. Really big butt holes are full of a lot of crap. My son is a genius.