Kids Are Gross (Can You Hear Me Now?)

I recently wrote this post for my other blog, and thought it would be an excellent intro to this post:

If you had told me yesterday that I would be able to write this true sentence, I would not have believed you:

This morning, BabyGirl actually ate cat poop for the second time in her life.

Thank you, I’ll be accepting my Mother of the Year award from Brittany Spears.

I mean, really?  Don’t you think once is enough to figure out it tastes like, . . . oh, I don’t know, CRAP??

It was only when I was talking to The Queen the other day that I realized how many gross things I’d seen involving my kids lately.  In no particular order:

Exhibit A:  Took BabyGirl to my Bible study last week.  All the kids were playing upstairs while the moms did our thing in the basement.  When I came upstairs to collect her and leave, I found her in the bathroom.  With a plastic cup.  Which had water in it.  With her sleeves wet to her elbows.  I asked her, “Did you drink the water out of the toilet?”  She said, “Yesh!” with a big smile.  Of course, if the question is phrased the right way you can get a two year old to admit they shot JFK, so I’m not sure how reliable her “Yesh” was.  I sanitized her hands and dragged her yelling out the door.  She wanted to drink the rest of the water in her cup.  (Honestly, after cat poop, should a little toilet water be cause for concern?)

Exhibit B:  We had some icy weather recently and the big trucks had come by sprinkling the road and parking lots with sand and salt.  A few days later, BabyGirl and I went to our local Wal-Mart.  (Don’t get jealous just ’cause we live on the wild side . . .)  As we headed home, I could see her top half in the rear view mirror.  She kept licking her hands.  All I could think was how many germs had been on the shopping cart.  If only.  When I got home and opened her car door, I saw that she was rubbing her hands all over the bottoms of her shoes and then licking the salt off.  The phrase “parking lot juice” just makes me nauseaus.  I picture some huge guy spitting his ‘baccy juice on the ground, some drunk teens peeing on the cart return, and all those winter cold loogies that get hocked on the ground.  I think I need to go lie down for a little while.

Exhibit C:  One of my big kids, DearDaughter4 (DD4) had been complaining about not hearing well with one ear.  (Don’t worry, this isn’t about bugs or worms in her ear.  Even I wouldn’t find that funny.)  Of course, SugarDaddy is a Googlechondriac, so he assumed this was some genetic disorder and we just should start learning sign language to prepare for her hearing loss.  I took her to the doctor.  When the doctor looked in her ears, she sent us to the clinic tech to get an “ear wash” so she could see the ears more easily.  (Side note–there is a whole product line dedicated to the washing out of ears.  Like little buckets that have a little hole for your ear so that when the water runs out, it just goes in the bucket instead of on your shoulder and down your shirt.  Imagine some guy years ago saying, “I have this vision . . . <snap> I know–I’ll make little ear buckets!  We’ll make a fortune!”)  So the clinic tech gets all the equipment put out and starts shooting warm water into DD4’s ears.  The little bucket is catching all that comes back out.  Only it doesn’t look anything like water.  More like a hearty apple cider.  With little bits of real apple.  I know, right?!  I’m across the room keeping BabyGirl occupied, but I am fascinated with the bucket of cider.  I asked the tech, “Are you getting a lot of stuff out of there?”  The clinic tech, who, I am sure,  deals with vomit, blood, and poop on a regular basis, actually wrinkled her nose like she was grossed out and said, “Yeah, a lot!” I was so proud.  After the ears were both cleaned, DD4 said, “Wow, every time I talk it sounds like I’m talking through a megaphone!”  I think she’ll be getting Q-tips for her birthday this year.

What a Smart Parent!

Just ’cause The Queen loves these bumper stickers so much, I had to show what I received in the mail this week:

Four for four!

I may not be into putting stickers on my car, but I am very proud of my kids for making honor roll.  They are all in honors classes and I am pretty much hands-off with their school work.  Don’t know where they got their study skills and work ethic–The Sugar Daddy and I are baffled as to where that DNA could have possibly originated.  Definitely not from us.

And, Queen? Since I have so many, I’ll be saving you one to put on your car.

Accessories are EVERYTHING!

Well, shit.  I guess if the Queen is going to actually post something, I need to give our blog a little love, too.  For BabyGirl’s birthday this year, the Queen gave her (among many cool, wondrous things) a backpack that is in the shape of a giant, fuzzy, pink cat.  BabyGirl wasn’t too sure about it.  Most people might find it a little disconcerting if you tried to force a huge stuffed animal onto their back.  So I hung it on the coat hooks next to the back door.  There it sat for about two months before BG decided that maybe she likes the cat after all.  Suddenly, she won’t go anywhere without the backpack.

With a cool backpack and hat, who needs pants?

With her elbow-length gloves (socks).

Not only does she wear it around the house, but she’s also wanting to wear it while we are out running errands.  She was always OK with having the backpack in the seat next to her while we were in the car.  Until this week.  Now, she insists on wearing the backpack while in her seat.

What? I'm totally comfortable.

What with the Queen’s love of purses, I’m thinking this is just her influence on BabyGirl’s fashion sense.  It’s better to look good than to feel good, dahling.

Dumb kids, dumber bumper stickers

Okay.  I have a beef that all you mothers and fathers who are insanely proud of your children’s accomplishments will probably hate and berate me for, but here goes.  What is up with those stupid, obnoxious “My kid is on the Honor Roll at Blah Blah Blah Middle School” bumper stickers?  Is making the Honor Roll really THAT huge a deal in this day and age that we have to read about your spawn of Einstein while sitting in rush hour traffic?  How grand an accomplishment can it be when half the minivans in the country are driving around sporting the same bumper braggers?  And with the continuing decline of education in America, is it really that difficult to be on the Honor Roll?  Hell, I was on the honor roll my entire life and look at me now: I just got back to work after being unemployed for a year and I spend my spare time ranting to the two people who read this blog (Hi Mom) about what irks me.  Wow… That was worth twelve years of busting my ass for good grades.  I saw a bumper sticker a few weeks ago that took the whole wonderchild thing up a notch.  It said, “Every kid deserves to be honored at Yadda Yadda Yadda Middle school.”  So just how effing stupid is your kid that you have to resort to THAT one!?  Why not just put a sticker in the back window of your Dodge Caravan that reads, “My kid is a major dumbass at the Too Lazy to Study School for Morons”?  And the “My child is a Presidential Fitness Award WInner” is a personal favorite.  I was a Presidential Fitness Award winner in high school.  Now I’m a single, overweight woman pushing 40 who sits at a computer all day and runs out of breath just walking the dog to the mailbox.  Your kid would be better off with the honor roll sticker.  But my all-time favorite, and the entire motivation for creating this rant, was a bumper sticker I saw on the back of a Honda Odyssey yesterday.  It read, “Parents are special at B**** R**  Middle School”.  Yeah… I bet they are.

The Godfather Says to “Hamburger” Him

I’m thinking the BabyGirl has a future doing dirty work for some well-connected Sicilian family. We were eating dinner the other night–a casserole with ground beef. During the conversation, I glanced over at her tray and all the beef was gone. I figured she loved it so much she had picked it all out and eaten it. Then I saw her spy one last piece of meat and she carefully pinched it and then slowly brought it up to her ear under her hair. When her hand came down, the meat was gone.

Now, I’m willing to accept that my kids may be a little weird sometimes, but I don’t think any of them have an extra mouth near their ear. I got up and lifted her hair. All of the ground beef from her dinner had been neatly collected in the hollow of her ear. It looked like a hearing aid made of meat. The best part was that she was totally matter-of-fact about it. Like she’s been putting meat in her ear at every meal–no biggie.

I started wondering if this could be a way for Sicilians to send a message. Sort of like the horse head in the bed or the fish wrapped in newspaper. “You’ll bake with the casseroles for this, Vinnie.”

Gaps in Learning

“What’s that?”

I’m watching a movie with my kids. In this particular scene, someone is putting a record on a record player. This is not high-brow stuff. What could they not understand? “What’s what?” I ask.

“What’s that black, round thing?”

Oh . . .no . . .she . . .didn’t. She did not just ask me what a record was. These kids are 11 years old. How could this have happened? Unless. . . Crap, I knew I shouldn’t have let them swallow all that toothpaste when they were toddlers. It’s gone and dumbed them down.

“Uh, you mean the record?”

“Ohhhhhh, that’s what a record is.”

These are the people we are trusting to take care of us when we’re old. They’ll be running the country and deciding the fate of the world. If any of that involves vinyl, we’re screwed.

To help open their innocent eyes, just a little peek at a time, I decide to show them some videos that were popular when MTV actually showed music videos. We used to have to sit for hours waiting on our favorite video and soak it all up for those short three minutes or so. Now, I can Google “Wang Chung” or “Kajagoogoo”, and can watch as many times as I want. Freaky. I showed them Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. They wanted to know who the guy was that was dancing. “Duh! That’s Michael Jackson!”

My sweet, innocent children all exclaimed, “But that guy’s got dark skin. Michael Jackson’s not black!” We’ve got some serious educating to do here. Made them watch part of The Wiz. Never thought that would be required viewing. And nowadays MJ looks more like Dorothy/Diana Ross than she does. Was Lisa Marie Presley doing crack, or what?! But I digress.

I guess most of us grew up with certain assumptions– air conditioning, television (even the black and white kind with the broken dial that you had to use needle-nose pliers to change the channel–and don’t tell me my house was the only one with a TV like that), telephones. You were lucky if you had one of those extra-long cords that let you walk a 5 foot diameter around the phone. My kids think it’s hilarious to see corded phones on TV now. They think those only exist in hotel rooms and movies.

My kids will have the same attitude about mobile phones, email, and DVD players in the minivan. Not to mention pizza brought hot to your doorstep in 30 minutes. And that’s when we’re too lazy to microwave something for dinner. (Somewhere, my grandmothers are rolling over in their graves.) One Dear Daughter told me last week that she loves Lean Pockets, but hates waiting 2 minutes for them to cook. Poor, disadvantaged children I have.

And BabyGirl will grow up thinking that everyone has always had a blog! I guess time and technology march on, as well as parents’ sob stories about life being so hard “when I was a kid”.