Boys are icky.

Launching Gavin off my shoulders in the pool, he shot up out of the water and said enthusiastically "Did you see my crack?!"

"Uh, no. Sorry." I said, people looking at us oddly.

Launched him again off my shoulders. Pops up out of the water, more enthusiastically, now almost yelling "DID YOU SEE MY CRACK?!"

"What?! NO, I didn't see your crack. I wasn't trying to see your crack." He actually looks disappointed about this.

Thinks to myself "This is crazy! Maybe I didn't understand him. Maybe I'm hearing things. Hmph."

Launched him yet again. "DID YOU SEE MY CRACK THIS TIME?" complete with underwater 6-year-old butt wiggle.

Nope. Read him loud and clear. Freaking weirdo. What is it with boys and butt cracks? Is this a problem with all males or just mine? Does it ever stop? Is there an antidote? Is it catching? Yeesh.

My work here is done....

Gavin, in his room for hitting Marshall in a dispute over a gun (of all the weird sentences to write), steps out and asks if he can come out now.

"Yes, but..." I began, taking a deep breath. "you have to understand that you cannot just go hitting people. We have talked about this before and..."

He rolls his eyes and walks slowly backward into his room, lightly closing the door behind him.

My son the mobster

Apparently the going rate for teeth these days is three whole bucks because that is what Gavin's girlfriend got for her front teeth. Gavin only got a buck for the first one (the tooth fairy hadn't accounted for inflation apparently) but because he had his dad painfully yank the second one out at the baseball game, dad thought it prudent to give him three bucks for it. (Let me state for the record that Jo refuses to play tooth fairy on the grounds that he doesn't want to deprive me of such a "fun" motherly duty. Riiiiight.)

Only problem is, we didn't HAVE three bucks on us at the time, so we borrowed it from Marshall "Frankie Hollow Legs" Gravano here. Homeboy has pestered us about that three bucks every day since then, sometimes repeatedly. If he comes at me with a baseball bat, I'm hiding. Can I come to your house?

Greetings from The Booger Brigade!

I have one booger getting teeth and one losing them. It's a neverending barrel of chuckles at my house.
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I was sitting on my bed feeding Rowan a few weeks ago after M&G had gone to bed when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet coming my way. In my doorway stands a forlorn Gavin. Tears welling in his eyes, chin quivering, he tells me that he's afraid that he's going to have to leave soon.

"Leave to go where, sweetie?!" At this point, despite not knowing what he's talking about, my eyes are welling up - something has broken his adorable little 6 year old heart and that, in turn, is breaking mine.

"I'm going to have to go live with another familyyyyyy." he wailed, nearly sobbing now.

"Oh sweetie, no! You're stuck with us! I'd have you live with me forever if I could!" I say, halfway between crying myself and laughing hysterically.

"But, but..." *sniffles* "I'm going to marry Abby-gail and then I'll have to live at her house." *snivels* "Do you know where she lives..." *hard gulp* *deep, wobbly breath* ".....so you can come visit meeeee?" *full blown sobbing, his head in my lap*

After I wrestled my swollen heart out of my throat, I explained to him that not only would he not be getting married to Abby-gail for a long time, he would probably be driving himself by then so he could come over any time he wants. In fact, if you don't come visit me, you little fink, then you'll be written out of the will!
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Abby-gail and her parents came for a cookout the following weekend and I recounted this story to them. I was meeting her dad for the first time that day but I was worried that he thought my adorable mama's-boy was a pervert or something. Thankfully, he thinks it is as cute as the rest of us do. Whew!

As I was making Gavin's burger, I jokingly pulled her mother aside (I totally love her mom) and said "Now, because Gavin is going to be living with you when they get married, you need to dress his burgers with a smiley face in ketchup on the bun. And it'd better have a nose, otherwise you'll never hear the end of it."

She said "Let me go get Abigail so you can tell her this. She'll be the wife after all. Better yet, just make a rule book and give it to her at the bridal shower."

I look over and Gavin is glaring at me as his future mother-in-law and I crack up laughing.

Parenthood is so fun!

Poor teething baby!

I'm in this recurring, revolving, ridiculous (yet ironically adorable) hell. I have some generic baby Tylenol that I bought before all the hubub and it seems to help a teensy bit but the only thing that truly stops the screaming is for him to nurse - whether he is actually getting anything out of them is apparently immaterial because my boobs are as empty as my checking account, yet still he sucks. So I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother closing things up and am basically walking around with my mudflaps hanging out (sorry for the TMI). He will nurse long enough to fall asleep but as soon as I try to lay him down (in all sorts of places, positions, situations) he wakes up and starts howling again so the only option I have is to put him back on the boob again. The toofies are right under the surface though so I'm hoping they break through soon, otherwise I fear my boobs might actually attempt to make a break for it.

Here. Hold this.

Wikipedia defines an earworm as a portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one's mind, put colloquially as "music being stuck in one's head."

I am the patron frigging saint of earworms. If ever there was a reason for you to stop reading my blog, this is it, because I will pass my earworms on to you in hopes that, like the tape in The Ring, if I give you a copy of the tape (get you humming my stuck tune) then I will be free from the punishment. Make sense?

Of course, if you get them as bad as I do, this might actually be a godsend for you because you can trade your earworm for mine - I might be able to kill yours and replace it with mine.

What is especially shitty about my hyper-stuck-in-headism is that I will usually get stuck on some short, tedious, mind-numbing stanza of lyrics and 9 times out of 10 those lyrics won't even be correct! Sometimes I don't know all the words so I'll just hum what's missing, leading to even more obnoxiousness.

Sometimes, I'll get a whole medley of crap running through there and want to ram crayons into my brain ala Homer Simpson. There was this whole mash-up of P!nk songs a few weeks ago.... *shudders*

Sometimes it's not even a song! It's a word or a phrase or god forbid a unique name, again, not pronounced even remotely close to what it should be. Drives me up a wall! Doutzen Kroes?! Doubt-zen Crows. I have no idea how accurate that is but I'm sure it's not even in a neighboring galaxy but it runs through my head all the time. And could you imagine - my head nearly exploded when that Precious movie came out. Gabourey Sidibe! Gab-oorie Sid-eeb. AHHHHHH! MAKE IT STOPPPPP!!!!

Most of the time, these things get in my head at horribly inopportune times, like 2am when I'm nursing Rowan for instance. Then my insomniac self is lying there reciting the same shit over-and-over. Those first few weeks home with Rowan I left the TV on in the bedroom for light. I seriously thought I was going to blow that "freecreditreport.com" guy's head clean off. 4am and all I could think was

Freecreditreport.com
Tell your friend, tell your dad, tell your mom
Never mind they've been singing our song
Since we first showed up with our pirate hats on

Nevermind that the sound wasn't on. All I had to do was see that pirate hat on the cymbal stand and that was it.

Last night it was The Beverly Hillbillies theme song. I have maybe seen two whole episodes of that in my entire life and the last one was probably half my life ago. It was bad:

I'mma here to tell ya story bout a man named Jed
da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Barely kept his family fed

That first line is probably all wrong, I couldn't remember the second and I have serious doubts about that third one. And that's all I know of the song, so that's what went around and around and around in my head.

I don't actually have an earworm right now thankfully. Some were trying to weasel their way in there (I'm looking at you, Michael Buble song) but I am so freaking tired I can't stand myself. I chaperoned the kindergarten field trip to the science museum today, after Rowan's frequent nighttime feedings last night and sports practices tonight so I am beat. You'd think that might make me more susceptible to those sorts of things but mercifully no. I think my brain left the building an hour or so ago...

Lamaze or from a Cheerio to a Donut.

I enjoyed taking Lamaze class with the WU (Wife Unit) but unfortunately she did not always want me to be there. Why you ask? Well, because I would say stupid stuff like; "You are going to go from a cheerio to a donut in no time at all and that is when you pop out the watermelon". (We will have to label this under "face palming" because she had to do that a lot around me and still does...;^)
I am totally surprised, now that I look back on those days, that she never slapped me... ...and yes, even I know I deserved a slap or two and still give her the opportunities but alas, she never takes them so because of this I never do learn when to keep the ole yapper shut...:>)