Well, I suppose it was inevitable that with all the unabashed bragging going on round here, something would happen to uh, deflate certain maternal heads.

To wit:

Logan (currently 4.5 yrs) made a completely sincere and earnest query at the dinner table this evening.


"Mom, are boogers junk food?"


Why couldn't he just ask me where babies come from?

Someone needs to invent a word that implies amusement whilst simultaneously going "Huh??"  (when I was younger, I thought that word was 'bemused')

Because I get that feeling around here a fair bit.  Especially from The Second Born (aka he who actually wears his glasses as he ought).  For the record, he's eleven.

Cases in point - his word choice:

Today, he asks if he can phone a friend to explain why he wasn't yet online for some game they were supposed to be playing together.  From the kitchen I hear him say, in what was nearly tele-marketer elocution, "I am calling to tell you that I am unable to meet you online, for it appears the server is down."  

A couple of months ago, he had a rather miserable fever and came downstairs about 10:00 at night to find me - he couldn't sleep and wanted to be near.  I settled him on the couch and asked "Can I get you a glass of water, honey, or anything else?".  To which he replied groggily "Water will be sufficient."  

WHO SAYS THAT??  Let alone a kid who still laughs at knock-knock jokes.

Oh, and shortly after leaving my father's driveway this summer for a ten hour drive home, he pipes up (in response to some instructions that Mike had just made, I have no idea what it was, I'd already opened my book) "Em knows the rules - and please note that I do not have access to the water!"  (we keep a case in the back of the van for trips).

It's as much the delivery that kills me.  He's dead serious, not trying to be funny.

Okay, so it's funnier if you can hear him.  But when I re-read this, I'LL hear him, and that's the real point of this journal for me.

I wonder if this one will go as fast as the last...  Or have as many wonderful moments.




This was taken on Labor Day, 2007 along the White Oak Falls trail in the Shenandoah Valley national park. 

Mike's family has an odd genetic predisposition to hold on to their baby teeth a bit longer than normal.  As in, 30 years longer than normal.  Um, in their heads, not under their pillows (I know you were thinking it).  My FIL was 32 when his last one gave it up.  Mike himself is 39 and still has one (people think it's a chipped tooth). 

Therefore it shouldn't have been a surprise to me a few weeks ago, when The Eldest (13 now) flashed that killer smile he inherited from his father, to realize he still has a baby tooth where his left adult canine should be.  I suppose the real surprise is that I hadn't noticed before.  Guess I'm just used to killer smiles with one tooth a bit smaller than the rest.  The dentist confirmed my suspicions - and told us he's got a couple of molars past due to fall out as well.  Yesterday the DDS yanked the one on the side already numbed for a filling.  

Leaving the office, lower lip all floppy and a wad of gauze held against the tooth socket, Eldest tries talking.  Emphasis on 'tries'.  Wasn't helped much by the both of us laughing our heads off at the attempt.  Which laughter on his part being all the more hilarity-enducing for how ridiculous it sounded.  The more he laughed, the funnier it got.

And then Girl Child (only 7), walking blithely past us to the car as we try (not very hard) to control our paroxysms, patronizingly admonishes her brother: "Don't talk with your mouth full."


Eldest may have the killer smile, but she's got a twinkle in her eye that would frighten a grown man to death.  Minx.  

That's my girl.

Eldest prefers not to come along on errands if at all possible.  Even better in his opinion if I take the younger three with me.  No competition for the video games then.  If I call to let him know we're going to be a bit late getting home from something, he's more than all right with that, thank you Mom.  So yesterday, when I left him at home to go pick up his siblings and their father at an activity we'd dropped them at earlier, he was quite pleased.  

However, Michael and I decided not to go straight home, but to do a bit of sofa shopping first.  So I called the house to let J know the plan.  Thoughtful mother that I am.

What I said, however, was "Hi, honey, you okay by yourself for a couple of hours?   We're going to go see Spiderman 3 so we won't be back for a bit."

Not sure if Mike nearly drove off the road laughing at what I said or the at the "Uh huh....WHAT??" he could hear coming from my cell.

After thirteen years of this kind of thing, you'd think my child would have learned by now.



(Actually, SecondBorn has learned so well he's disappointed if I let him down.  The other day he asked what  I was busy making for dinner and when I answered honestly he sighed and replied "I sure miss monkeybrains".)

...it would have been an amusing anniversarial coincidence.  As it is, not much was remotely laughable until Logan unexpectedly gave the doctor examining his laceration a thumb's up.  Well, and admittedly the shameless comedy/flirtation act he did with the physician's assistant and nurse.  A bit precocious for a 3.5 year old (I've learned a lot can change in half a year, though...)

I'd call the coincidences of being assigned the exact same examining room in the ER as the last time he needed stitches - in the exact same place on his eyebrow as he needed nearly a year ago - wry, rather than amusing.  Cosmic irony.  Also, the cute physician's assistant was the same one who stapled his head a few months back.  Oh, did I forget to journal that one?  While diving after his eldest bro's leg, he missed and hit the edge of some rather ornamental baseboard.  Which convoluted edge made his wound look like something BIT his scalp.  Maybe that's why the P.A. remembered we have a dog named Zeke.  For awhile there I was impressed with her memory skills.  She's not bad with a staple gun and sutures, either.  

Sigh.  Three times in a YEAR.  Three children and twelve years of parenting with nary a single stitch (though there WERE a couple of close calls - J fell one time and hit the wooden arm of the mission-style rocker so hard his tooth punched through just below his lower lip.  Oy.) and now three ER visits in less than a year.  For the same child.  And while we're in the waiting room, the scamper tried to run around and slide across the slick tile floor in the waiting room - causing one grandmotherly type to laughingly exclaim it was no wonder he was there, with that much energy.  Well, at least someone was laughing.  Sheesh.  

I will say this - the tough little guy only cried for about three seconds when it happened.  Not at all pleased with being poked and sewn, but getting him talking took his mind off of it.  I was grateful they let me be the one to hold his arms and legs still.

Also, it appears that it takes one to two years for a laceration to heal completely.  In case anyone was interested in details, he slipped on the last stair coming down them and knocked his eyebrow bone hard enough against the end newel-post to reopen his old cut.  Evidently the epidermis along an old laceration is weaker...and eyebrow ridges are statistically the site most stitched in ER's.   

You learn something new every day.  I wouldn't have minded not learning so much yesterday.  I think we'll stay home from pre-school today and cuddle up to read a lot of books together instead when he wakes up.  Good medicine for both of us.