Tread Lightly Around Toddlers

I keep stepping on magnetic letters and saying, "Arrr!  I'm about to just throw these things away!  They're always all over the floor instead of the fridge anyway!"
RJ is always willing to help his mama:  "RJ," he says.

RJ says "RJ" (pronounced Ah-Jah) in response to many things, and it always means a full and complete sentence and changes according to the voice he uses.

-During fireworks, in a whiny voice, it means, "I'm scared.  Hold me mom!" (aaaah-jaaaaah)
-If his brother tries to take his toy, it's a stern voice, obviously meaning, "That's mine!  Back off brother!" (AH-JAH!!!)  **This also applies if the toy doesn't belong to him because we have trained him as such, always saying, "He's the baby.  Just give it to him."  Something we are really going to pay the price for someday, either by intensive retraining or monetarily giving him everything he desires.**
It will obviously be the first option since we don't want to raise a douche.  Just saying.
-If he has something his brothers don't have, it's in a sing-song voice.  Leo:  "Why does RJ have Kool Aid?" (aaaahhhh-jaaaaHHH)

So, back to RJ being the helpful little cutie that he is, he says, "RJ!" which obviously meant, "You need help, Ma?  I got this."

And he starts throwing all of the magnetic letters into the trash.
"No, no!  Put them back on the fridge!"
"Why?" he asks.
I understand his confusion as they will be back on the floor later this afternoon.

As a parent (or a sibling or an aunt or a dog) who lives with children (or even visits children on a sporadic basis, at best) you KNOW what it's like to step on Legos.  Or Hot Wheels.  Or that time I stepped on a plastic ring -- the kind that come on the tops of cupcakes for different holidays.  You know?  The kind that are now banned from coming into our house?  Yeah, those.  It was a leprechaun one left over from St. Patrick's Day.

I knew those things were evil when Melissa Bruder and I watched the movie back in 1993.

So I step on this ring and the part of the ring that goes around your finger (the ring part of the ring?) breaks.  And what happens, you ask?  The rest of that ring makes a hole in the heel of my foot and decides to invade my flesh.  It was around a quarter of an inch long.  Yes, I measured.  Why?  Is that weird?  Since it is curved in shape, when I tried to pull it out, I was met with resistance.  I hobbled outside and called for my neighbor's help and she came to my rescue, pulling out the green bastard that tried to take me down.

Nothing a lil duct tape band aid couldn't fix.

Or how about another thing that has graced all of our floors?  I'm talking about poop.  As Elmo's Potty Time has taught my toddler, poop is a thing of many names:  dookie, Number 2, caca, etc.  However, I'm pretty sure that this is the only thing RJ has learned from his Elmo and all of his toilet wisdom.  This is what happened just the other day:

RJ comes running through the house to sit on his frog potty.
He says, "Poop!"
Much excitement from me, "Are you going poop???"  (Yes!!!  Fantastic, I think!)
*insert here a little dream about being a diaper-free household*
He smiles.
"Floor," he says.
*squash dream here*
"Floor what?" I ask.
"Poop.  Floor."
"What?"
He points.
*now imagine me running around the house, more or less in a cautious fashion, looking for dookie, Number 2, caca, etc. on my floor somewhere.*
I want to scream at him, "Learn to say the name of a room...  Where the hell is the poop at???"

But I'm too busy running around with cleaning supplies in my hand.

I find said turd next to the toy box.  Since this incident, if you ask my child where Elmo goes pee, he answers "toilet", but if you ask him where Elmo goes poop, he says "floor".  I tell him that you can't go poop on the floor and he asks me why?

"Because then there's poop on the floor!"

And you know mommy is going to be the one to step on it...

Awwwwwkward!

Awkward moments are a part of life.  When children are involved, they tend to multiply.  When MY children are involved...

Well, let's just say that those awkward photo posts that get passed around pale in comparison.  You know the ones that show a bunch of Walmart shoppers in see-through pants?  Or the maternity ones that have a pregnant wife naked and covering her breasts while her hubby holds a gun?  I could go on but the point is moot because I already warned you.

Pales.

So we're in the restroom at hell's gate -- oh, I'm sorry.  What I meant to say was Chuck E. Cheese's.  

That was an honest mistake, really.  

It could happen to anyone that ran around chasing after who they thought was their kid for the last half an hour, only to find out that your child is the one wading around in the only water game in the entire building. 

Or maybe it's because your other child was hiding inside the basketball game under the net, screaming bloody murder because a deranged looking rat is trying to get him to follow him around (and haven't we all taught our kids not to follow and accept things from strangers?  Well, "strangers" is kind of a lose term that excludes Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and anyone's house that lay in your path on Halloween night...)  It could be because you just attended a "rock 'n roll" concert involving --  oh, who cares.  That crap is NOT rock 'n roll. Although it could cause severe ear damage.  It made me want to do what Gavin does when he asks to play phone games.  

"Mom, can I play phone games?"  Immediately covers ears.

"No," I answered.

"Oh, I thought you were going to yell at me for asking again."  

Now, that's smart.  One day, I heard that question just 37 too many times and I freaked out.  He learned his lesson and covers his ears, avoiding what could be a disaster.

Why can't this logic be applied to this "awesome" place we're regular patrons of?  Weren't you the one hiding under that basketball net?  Use your brain, son.  Times like these can be avoided!

Anyway, back to the point.  We're in the restroom at "the place that will not be mentioned" and a woman comes in talking on her cell phone.  This actually really bothers me, but RJ is a toddler.  Toddlers are little ego-maniacs, and he just LOVED that this woman kept talking to him.  

She says, "Hi." 

RJ replies with a silent wave.  

This is as effective as when he talks on the phone and tries to show people his stuff...  or feed them his sandwich.

I guess the signal was bad in the area that I would run to in case of a tornado, so then the woman says, "Can you hear me now?" 

And my child yells, "YEAH!!!"

Luckily, he got sidetracked at this point when he heard his echo. 

I'm fairly certain you know what happened next.  

After the sound checks were properly administered, we returned to that fun place we were at.  I was half hoping that we would step out and be greeted by adorable little people and a nasty shoe-stealing which. Unfortunately, we were greeted by only the little people.  About 800 of them being my rough estimate.  Isn't there a fire code they should be following???

These kind of special bathroom moments aren't just reserved for the places where "a kid can be a kid."  

They happen at federal buildings: 

"Mom, do you pee out your BUTT???"

And they happen at home: 

Hubby:  "What happened to your shorts?"

Me, aggressively:  "You want to know what happened to my shorts?"

Hubby:  "Probably not, now that you said it that way."

Me:  "Well, while I was administering a shower to one of our children, one of our other children came up while I was kind of standing and lifted up the toilet seat to pee.  Then I sat back down where I was sitting, only this time my butt went into the toilet and your child was then peeing on me.  And that's what happened to my shorts."

It's okay, though.  I like to look on the bright side of things.  That could have easily happened at Chuck E. Cheese's with all of the tiny crazed and deranged humans running around there.  

As a friend of a friend so eloquently put it:

I'm pretty sure they freebased sugar.

I thought this illustration was spot-on, and I would have loved meeting her at the birthday party we both attended.  

I was really busy, though. 

Chasing after someone else's kid.

  

The Subjective Subjects of Kindergarten

When I picked the kids up from school today, after pressing snooze on my alarm (that indicated that not only had I fallen asleep while putting the baby down, but that I had managed to accomplish absolutely nothing all day), they had some FANTASTIC things to tell me.

DISCLAIMER:  Fantastic things to kindergarteners are a very different kind of idea that includes, but is not limited to:  bugs, squished bugs, dried bugs, liquids or solids (or liquids that should be solids) that exit the body, milk spraying out of the nose (accidental or on purpose -- a feat my boys are currently working to perfect), clowns (even the very creepy ones), hitting, kicking, punching, general mayhem, boogers, the word "butt" in any language (even the one with only one T), and learning to read.

Learning to read is obviously an amazing thing (otherwise I wouldn't be capable of bringing you such intelligent content on a semi-yearly basis when it strikes my fancy to sit down at the computer and do something that a handful of people find productive) so I am on board with this being in the list.  I just don't know exactly where it fits in with all the other things in the list.

Unless it was a milk-proof book about clowns squishing bugs containing the word "butt" on every page in a multilingual fashion that could later be inserted on the hand to use as a boxing glove, or something of the sorts.

DISCLAIMER:  Please don't feel the need to actually make my children a book like this because it will get "lost" very soon after the present is opened.  Although if you want to find yourself the infamous subject of a semi-annual, sort of productive blog someday...

Anyway, back to the subjective subject at hand:  "fantastic" things.

Once I got over that I-took-a-three-hour-nap-in-the-middle-of-the-day nausea feeling, I was ready to listen.

Until I heard what it was about.
And I heard it loud.
And I heard it clear.

"We had a practice fire drill today," Gavin said, innocently.

"It went like this:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
Leonardo pipes up, because he is always ready for an obnoxious challenge, "No, no, no.  It was more like this:  EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE"

Don't mind me, I'm thinking, while my eyes are aggressively blinking in defense of my brain.
I'm only driving a car.  No big deal.

Gavin:  Maybe it was like, SKKKKIIIIIIII-SKKKKIIIIIII-SKKKKIIIIIIII-SKKKKIIIIIII
Leonardo:  SQQQUUUUEEEEEEK-SQQQUUUUEEEEEEK-SQQQUUUUEEEEEEK
RJ:  eeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeee
Me:  Oh, that is NOT EVEN true, RJ!  You don't even go to school yet!

Completely inaccurate, I think, shaking my head...  and trying to imagine what the alarm sounded like at my school when I was little.  Not that anyone would listen to me if I tried to correct them.

After all, who knows alarms better than a mother of boys?

So when we make it home, Gavin is SO EXCITED about something he has in his folder from school:
 "I got a reminder in my bag, Mom!  A reminder!  I can't wait for you to read it!"
"Oh, really?  That sounds terrific!"
"It is!  Can we get it out now?"

*sigh* Always so eager for the fun to begin.

"No, no.  Let me get your snack and do what I need to do.  Then we'll sit down together so we can pull out your folder and really have time to enjoy looking through it together."

*Snack*

*Other stuff, hastily done because of the aforementioned less-than-productive afternoon*

"Okay, Gav!  I'm all ready to sit down and see all the great things you have in your school folder."
He's beyond ready, sitting poised with his big smile.

He starts by handing me the little yellow paper with the word "REMINDER" on the top.

Your child's meal account has a negative balance of ___8___ dollars

They should really speed up this whole "learning to read" thing.  It's on the list!  Don't the kindergarten teachers know about the list???