Fudging the Sex Talk

Sooooooo, yeah. I shoulda seen this one coming. The boys and I started flipping through photo albums of when they were babies and there happened to be a few pics of yours truly with what looked to be three watermelons under my shirt.

"Mom, what's wrong with your stomach?" Julian asks.

Haha. You were wrong with it, I want to say. But I'm not that mean (usually). "You were in there, Julian."

"WHAT?!"

"You were. I swear. No joking."

"NO WAY!!"

"Seriously."

"And where was Ian?"

I point to a picture of Ian with sweet potatoes mashed all over his face, including up his nose and dabbled across every single eyelash. "Here he is. Eating." Ian is alarmed by this photo of himself. He is even more alarmed by another picture of himself with a green bean in his ear, as if his hearing might have been at risk.

"Why do I have food all over my face?" Ian looks at me accusingly, as if I should have done something to prevent this.

"Because you didn't like to eat. We had trouble getting the spoon in your mouth because you kept moving your head. And you spit a lot of stuff out that we had to scrape up and put back in your mouth."

Ian's face is contorting while he's listening to me, a giant facial 'ewwwwwwww'. All the while, Julian has been quiet, staring out the window at the two tomato plants on our little patch of a balcony. We are desperately trying to cultivate them so we can eat at least one tomato before it's time to go back to school.

"Mom?" Julian says dreamily, still looking out the window.

"Yes?"

"But Mom? If I was in your belly, then how did I get out?" He flips both palms up in the air like he does whenever an idea totally confounds him and seems to be something that would have to also confound the whole world. A mystery. A totally impossible thing to explain. Like why he has to go to bed at night.

So what can I say? This is indeed a totally confounding question. I remember when I looked on the EPT stick at dinnertime on January 10, 2005 and saw those lines when I was pregnant with Ian, the first pregnancy, and the immediate thought I had was "How is he going to get out?" I felt like I had just been put on a massive log flume and had no choice but to get DAMN soaked before I was let off of it. No choice.

Ian did get out, and so did Julian, but it wasn't pretty. I look down at Julian now and consider giving him the real answer, but then I remember that he is only three years old. I think about my husband, much older than three, and how he looked when Ian and Julian got out. Like he had just smelled very, very bad milk and he would never drink milk again. He has made me swear that this subject, or anything related to it, like menstrual cramps, will never be discussed in our house.

So I really have no choice but to fudge my answer to Julian. So I just say "It was magic." Which if you think about, isn't entirely a fudge. It was.

Peanuts

Ian has an infected penis, and this morning I found myself in the cramped bathroom of the "minute clinic" (inspires confidence, doesn't it?) trying to get him to pee into a plastic cup. As of this morning, peeing really really hurts. So now, it's no freaking dice, Mom. He says he won't pee for the rest of his life. Still, I try, but the scene isn't a good one. Tears from him. Cajoling from me. Sobs. More cajoling. Backing into the corner, tears spurting. Promises of new DVDs and ice cream. More tears. Meanwhile, Julian was observing the tense exchange with rapt attention.

"Mom? Mom? Mom?"

"Yes, Julian."

"What's wrong with Ian?"

"His penis hurts him."

"His peanuts? Ian, do your peanuts hurt you?"

Ian is too busy crying to respond.

"Mom? What happened to Ian's peanuts?"

"I don't know, Julian."

"Mom? What are peanuts?"

"Penis, Juli. Penis."

"Peanuts?"

I'm back to cajoling Ian and turn away from Julian. This always annoys him.

"Mommmmm?! Mooommm! I'm talking to you. Mom?!"

"Yes, Julian."

"Mom? Do you have peanuts?"

"No, mommies don't have peanuts."

Julian is turning in circles near the side of the toilet thinking about this.

"Ian? Mommies don't have peanuts. Only boys have peanuts. Only boys and papas have peanuts," he reports. He comes face to face with Ian and strokes his arm to try and calm him down. My sons tend to show enormous compassion for one another. It usually lasts a total of 1.5 seconds before the upset one of them kicks the other away.

"Ian? Do your peanuts hurt you? Ian, don't worry. Your peanuts won't hurt much longer. It's OK."

I'm just watching them, thinking about the various ways of extracting urine from my son. I envision myself tickling him until he pees and then catching the urine as it trickles down his leg. I guess that wouldn't be what you'd call a 'clean catch.' Julian taps me on the cheek and I come out of my daze.

"Mom? Mom? It's OK. I told Ian his peanuts won't hurt much longer."

"OK, thanks Julian. Is he going to pee in the cup?"

Julian purses his lips. He is all business. "No, Mom. No. I really don't think so."

Extremely Random Acts of Kindness

I went to bed last night believing my older son Ian is possibly the most generous and warm-hearted 4-year-old to ever live. Then I made the mistake of praising him for it.

Last night we got back to our hotel room late and Julian was sleeping in my arms as we came in. Ian was carrying two souvenir treasures that Julian had been coveting all day: a miniature wooden sailboat with real cloth sails and a shell from a snail (snail not included, thankfully). As Ian passed by Julian's bed, he laid them on his brother's pillow and went to put on his pajamas. Julian woke up to find them this morning, elated.

At breakfast, I couldn't contain my pride.

"Ian, that was really, really a nice thing that you did last night."

Ian looks at me. Plum jam is making a Gorbachev-like mark on the side of his face and he doesn't seem concerned with wiping it off.

"Huh?"

"Last night? When you gave Julian your boat and your snail shell."

"Huh?"

"Do you remember doing that? Putting them on his bed when we came in?"

"Huh?"

"Last night, Ian. Last night. Do you remember coming into the hotel room?"

"Yeah."

"And then you put your boat and snail shell on Juli's bed. You remember that?"

"No."

"Did you just put them there because you were tired of carrying them?"

Now Ian's tongue is flapping around the corner of his mouth trying to wipe the jam clean. He looks like a frog trying to nab a fly. "Probably," he says, tongue flapping.

I take a sip of coffee and regroup. "Anyway, Ian, that was really nice."

And just as the words are coming out of my mouth, Ian whips around to his little brother and licks his cheek with a tongue full of jam. Julian howls and grips his face, screaming as if Ian were a comic strip villain and had just splashed him with a vat of sulfuric acid. Then Ian turns back to me. "Huh?"

"Nevermind."