the young and the restless

so it was another very special visit to the ob/gyn today. okay, first off, i had a sonogram. this is at 12 weeks gestation, and it's to check for various birth defects (and everything looks fine.) now, every woman i've ever met already knows this, but i have yet to meet a man (INCLUDING all the newly-minted MD's i hang out with) who hasn't had to ask multiple times, so i will add this for their benefit: no, you cannot tell the gender yet. a penis or lack thereof is visible at the 18-20 week sonogram. and this is why y'all's boards scores suck ass.

now, all the books say that you can first feel your baby moving inside of you no earlier than 16 weeks, maybe not until 18 or 20. i know i felt EG right at 16 weeks, and the twits (specifically spazmonkey, since i don't think dramaqueen moved at all except to occasionally kick his brother out of his personal space or roll over to find a more comfortable napping position) right at 15 weeks. at 16 weeks, a baby is about 4 inches long.

i'm at 12-1/2 weeks, and this baby is about 2 inches long. weighs about half an ounce. and i swear on all that is holy that i have felt it moving for several days now. tiny, little fluttery movements that are simply unmistakable. barely discernible, but there.

okay. so today's sonogram provided proof that i am not fooling myself. this kid is insane. i damn near asked the ob/gyn for a prescription for ritalin on the spot. this freakin 2-inch fetus was JUMPING. i'm not making this up. imagine this... little humanoid thingy kinda laying on it's back, all its limbs waving like an octopus on meth, and then it suddenly rears back and WHAM! the little thing flies from the bottom of its living quarters to the top, a distance as high as the kid is tall, almost faster than you can follow. the little shit did this 4 or 5 times in the first two minutes of the sonogram. i guess the kid eventually got bored with that and took a break. i don't think it got tired, because the limbs continued to wave like crazy. and crazy-fast, too. i remember limbs waving on other sonograms. every other time i've seen it, its been a slow, sort of "groooooovy, i'm under waaaaaaater" kind of movement. not this. this was more of a "I CAN EAT TEN NINJAS AND POOP THEM OUT BEFORE YOU CAN BLINK!" kind of thing.

now, i have never gotten a sonogram at 12 weeks before; perhaps this is perfectly normal behavior for a fetus of this age. i'm guessing not, since the antics got a couple of "wow"s and a "come on, now, hold still for just a SECOND" and several "and she's rolling over... again"s from the sonographer.

i would like to take this opportunity to tell my audience that i do not deserve this. i was a painfully good kid. my children are karmic punishment for somebody else's childhood misbehaviors. somewhere, some completely spazzy asshole has 3 or 4 sweet little girls who never talk back, color inside the lines, and like to read a lot.

notice the sonographer said "she?" everybody is saying "i bet it's a girl!" i think this is because that's what you are obligated to say to a woman with three boys. EG says he hopes it's a sister, because we don't have one of those yet. i thought about pointing out that we don't have a dog yet, either, but rather than serving as proof that we don't need everything we don't have, it'd probably just remind him that he wants a dog.

so anyway. in between the sonogram and the brief visit with the doctor, we sat in the waiting room. the twits watched the price is right, and found all the big flashing lit-up numbers very entertaining (kind of like educational children's programming, only confusing.) after showing everyone in the waiting room his new picture of his new sister, EG asked if he could pick up a magazine, and chose "BabyTalk's Mom-to-Be." He flipped right to an article titled "YOUR CHANGING BODY." (those of you who have been reading my rants for a while now probably have a pretty good idea of where this is headed.)

EG: HEY MOM! WHAT'S A VAGINE-AL?
(this conversational technique is called "testing my dedication to the idea of not instilling in my children any shame about body parts or sexuality.")

me: you say it "vaginal." it's an adjective for when you're talking about a vagina.

EG: SO VAGINAL DRYNESS IS WHEN YOUR VAGINA IS NOT WET?
(at this point, a 30-something redhead across the way failed in stifling a snort and had a coughing fit, while her two-year-old looked on in awe, trying to figure out what was so funny. several other women tried not to stare. a chinese couple who didn't speak english very well whispered at each other in chinese, no doubt trying to figure out if they had heard the boy correctly. a couple of black women in the corner knew damn well it was okay to find this funny, and had a good laugh about it with each other, nearly waking up the 6-week-old baby with them.)

me: yyyyyyep.

EG: WELL I GUESS YOU WOULDN'T WANT IT TO BE WET.
(at this point, one of the women who was laughing unabashedly lost it completely, tears streaming down her face, rocking forward howling "hooooooooo! hoooooooooo!")

me: yyyyyyep.

EG: I'M ALMOST DONE WITH THIS ARTICLE! I CAN READ VERY FAST!

me: you're doin great!

then he lapsed into utter silence, completely absorbed with the rest of the article. this is even worse than his top-volume discussion in the crowded waiting room. the silence means he has internalized the contents of the article, is mulling it all over, and in 1-5 days, will have several well-thought-out questions for whatever adult is nearby about darkening nipples, changes in libido, and kegel exercises. which means he should be about ready to open the floodgates when the twits' new pre-school teacher comes for her in-home visit next week. i'm considering buying him a new video game and putting a tv in his bedroom for this.

and now, the obligatory evil skull-demon pictures, virtually identical to every other sonogram ever taken in the history of fetal sonography, a fact that you are supposed to ignore as you politely ooo and aah over the unique beauty of this particular fetus-blob!

county fair

okay, so adults may find the carny huckster dollar-grabbing bullshit fairly depressing, but little kids just see bright lights and sugar. so we took ours to the county fair, and they loved it. we went through the funhouse. evilgremlin sprinted off ahead, and i heard a lot of "ow!"s interspersed with the declarations of this being the coolest funhouse ever. i was in charge of spazmonkey, who managed to squeeze through some places he wasn't supposed to fit, get turned around, and leave me scrambling to catch up. positiverolemodel dragged a very cautious dramaqueen through. he was very interested in *observing* the funhouse experience, not so much in actually participating. prm managed to pick him up and set him back down multiple times in quick succession in the hamster-wheel exit, so it almost looked like he walked out on his own. evilgremlin rode a tiny little shorty-ferris wheel and liked it... though during the last couple of go-rounds, he looked tight-lipped and ready to hork. luckily, the ride stopped right then, which made me wonder if the officiating carny had gotten some practice in determining when to stop that shit before the toddlers drop their cookies on him. showed them the big-ass rides, but every time EG asked to go on one, i explained how he'd either puke or pee himself. so he finished off the day by asking a little kid who rode down a three-story slide on his dad's lap if he had peed himself. admission, rides, a funnel cake, sno cones and popcorn, and we managed to get out of there under $25. coulda been worse! we'll be back friday night for the demolition derby.

lovin the noonoos...

apparently, nodamnsense's boy wampus has not let go of the noonoos since they arrived a couple of days ago. yep. doin my part to keep another heathen off the streets. he seems to have decided that when they're that small, they're not only not the least bit frightening, but really rather cuddly and friendly. so long as he doesn't start doing what they tell him to do late at night when mommy and daddy are sleeping, it's all good.

the line

there is a line. i didn't know it existed until i crossed it. that line is between three and four children.

see, when people see you dragging your butt around with three noisy little boys, they smile. they say things like "oooh, you must be so busy!" and "how fun!" and "they're all best friends, aren't they?" even if they, like most people, have only one or two kids, they can imagine having three, and it's all good.

now, i've noticed that when you tell someone you're incubating #4, the smile evaporates. you get a second, more scrutinizing once-over, and a bit more physical distance is maintained. instead of leaning in, they lean back. the facial expressions range from bewilderment to mild distaste, as if you've just admitted to buying healthy white babies on the black market rather than making them y'own damn self. the happy exclamations are replaced with things like "umm... when are you going to stop?" and "are you catholic, or mormon?" (this last came from a well-intentioned but perhaps unthinking coworker of prm's. i told him that his response should have been, "neither. i'm just a methodist with a huge dick.") apparently, three kids is within the realm of normalcy; four is just WRONG and you need to be told about it.

I know someone with ten kids (and another on the way, of course!) who agrees, and adds: "Yes, it seems the dividing line between acceptable and weird is right there at baby number four. There is another line before baby seven where you move from weird to psychotic. The rude comments stop after that and people either express sympathy or simply say nothing at all. It's as if they know their ridicule and condemnation will mean nothing at all to you."

so, hey, that's good news... as soon as we get to the baby** that finally allows prm to legitimately bestow his favorite name - septimus - the lectures on reproductive propriety will end! yay!

now, in keeping with the theme of "dumb shit people say about your baby-making habits," let me add the following nugget of wisdom: if you or your spouse ever gets a vasectomy, do not under any circumstances actually TELL anyone that a vasectomy went down. you can simply say "we're not planning on having any more," or "barring any acts of god, we're done." because if you later wind up in that lucky 1% or so whose highly motivated gametes manage to yahoo their way past the ball blockade, your new favorite question will become, "well, who's the father!?!?" no, really. it's funny as hell. never gets old.

of course, i've managed to come up with some fun answers to that question. like, "you." (or "your husband/boyfriend," as the case may be.) also fun is "elvis!" (this one works best with a vapid, almost drooling smile and a subtle facial tic.)

**for those of you worried that i'm serious... calm the fuck down. i'll be gettin a mississippi appendectomy as soon as this kid vacates, and resume my regular schedule of getting drunk and starting fights in the front yard in my bare feet and an oversized tinkerbell t-shirt, in the hopes of getting on cops and finally jump-starting that career as a paris-hilton-esque famous-for-no-definable-reason famous-person.

NINJAS VS. NOONOOS!

a little background first... my best friend nondamnsense has a two-year-old boy, wampus. since he was tiny, he has been both drawn to and terrified by vacuum cleaners. he wants to approach it. he wants to look at it. he wants to open and close the closet door to check on it repeatedly. he wants to tell you all about it. but if you pick him up and carry him too close to it, he stiffens up and starts shaking like a fainting goat. so to help the boy out, i figured i'd combine the innocuous fun of miniature vacuum cleaners and the violent fun of stomping the crap out them with highly trained martial artist killing machines... and so i made him the board game "Ninjas vs. Noonoos: The Most Excellent Battle for Intergalactic Domination."

for those of you who have not had your brains rotted by the company of toddlers, i should explain that "vacuum cleaner" is a real bitch to pronounce if you're under the age of 4. the teletubbies, with their infernal cockney babytalk, call their vacuum cleaner "noonoo." this is really easy to pronounce. i have yet to meet a parent of a toddler who has not given up on their studious shunning of all things teletubby and started calling their own household vacuum cleaner a noonoo. in fact, many parents i know will call any noisy, scary appliance a [modifier]+noonoo, in an attempt to create a mental connection between the appliance in question and the happy, inoffensive plush teletubby appliance, and thus get the kid to quit screaming every time you turn your appliance on. in our house, for example, we have the "coffee-noonoo," for the coffe bean grinder, "plates and cups noonoo" for the dishwasher, and the "liquor-noonoo" for the blender.

so... here's the boardgame! i found 8 different dollhouse vacuum cleaners on ebay (see that one with the red head, yellow stick, and blue bag? yeah. highly sought-after collectible, apparently. had it still had the "renewal" sticker on the back of the bag, it would have cost $25-$50. without the sticker, 'twas a mere 99 cents. that's right, wampus. you now know what you are worth to me.) so, eight ninjas and eight noonoos face off on a hex grid with rules of combat adapted (translation: slightly modified, but basically stolen) from the "Lord of the Rings Risk: Trilogy Edition" boardgame.

now, the two-year-old is likely not going to have the attention span for the actual boardgame; i'm basically giving him some cool noonoo toys and a box to keep them in. but presentation is important, dammit, and i made a nice presentation with this, right down to the asian-print satin bag to store the ninjas in (courtesy of a wedding favor from a taiwanese friend's wedding) and the yin-yang throwing-star battle marker (courtesy of a recently purchased teenage mutant ninja turtle's bag o' weapons.) i even scoured the net for the perfect font to download (it's called "jappernese." offensive? maybe. but cool!) it's going in the mail to denver this morning... and i have been kept off the streets for another weekend.

so i had to take all three heathens along with me today...

to my ob/gyn appointment. now, call me stupid, but i had not mentioned yet that heathen #4 was on the way. i was basically waiting for evilgremlin to ask me why i was so damned fat. actually, i was really waiting to find out if it was a boy or girl, mostly because, if we told EG we didn't yet know which it was, that uncertainty would probably be enough for him to deduce that there was some CHOICE in the matter. he would then demand a boy (i think... no tellin with him, really) and be really pissed off if and when we later told him it was a girl, instead.

so the nurse whipped out the blood pressure cuff. EG narrated in his usual drone while the twits watched with great interest... any contraption that makes noise, wraps around body parts, and has a dial with lots of numbers has massive potential for nefarious applications, and they were taking mental notes on how to operate it. they started to lose interest when she whipped out the doppler-heartbeat-listener thingy, until she finally tracked down the heartbeat, and EG asked what that noise was.

nurse: that's the baby's heartbeat.

EG: baby? MOM! how could you guys even go and make another baby when three boys is enough?!?!?

the twits immediately picked themselves up off the floor, where they had been busy rolling playdoh into penises and/or giraffes, and two little wide-eyed heads popped up over the exam table.

DQ: baby?
SM: baby?
DQ: where?
SM: what baby?

they're staring intently at the swishy-sounding box, trying to figure out what, exactly, it has to do with this supposed baby that their big brother is so riled up about.

EG: MOM! when i said we wanted another brother you said you weren't going to have any more! you were WRONG! how did you guys screw this up? isn't dad supposed to be a doctor?

me: dude, sometimes i'm just not in charge.

EG: like at the doctor's office?

me: yeah.

EG: oh. *pause* but MOM! you were at HOME when you said you weren't going to have any more babies!

me: yep, well...

at this point, the ob gyn walks in, laughing almost as hard as the nurse and i were.

ob: hi, evilgremlin! how are you?

EG: well, my mom's trying to fill up our family! and that baby broke her belt, too.

me: nooooo, not yet. that's just how you take the belt off and put it back on, see? that's how it opens.

EG: oh. so it's going to break your belt later?

me: well, maybe.

EG: you mean when you get fat, or when it comes out and starts breaking stuff?

me: both.

EG: when is it coming out?

ob: february. it'll be a cold day with snow when this baby comes home with you.

EG: so you have to stay here until the baby comes out?

me: no. we're going home in a few minutes.

EG: okay. but don't you forget to come back to the doctor when it's time for that baby to come out of your tummy! you have to have a doctor do that, remember?

after the shock wore off, EG went total medieval mother hen on me, telling me to be careful, to not let the twits use their elbows in my belly for leverage to get into my lap, and to write the due date on the calendar so i wouldn't forget to go to the doctor. then he wandered around listing off all the things we would need and wondering where we'd put them.

it hasn't occured to him yet to ask where this baby is going to sleep. i'm going to tell him "your room, dude."

so i told my best friend nodamnedsense about the appointment on the phone today, and he had this to say over email later:

I sure hope that you get a baby girl. It will be a source of constant fascination for the rest of the brood. Lord, can you imagine Spazmonkey's homicidal, chest-pounding tendencies channelled towards protecting a baby sister? Imagine Dramaqueen's, for that matter. You'll probably have to leave the rest of the kids with a sitter when you take shorty #4 to the pediatrician.

this last comment is in reference to the first time i took the twits to get a bunch of shots... three-year-old evilgremlin got into a physical altercation with the nurse, screaming "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GIVE THE BROTHERS ANY FUCKING OWIES! DON'T TOUCH THEM!"

clutching his peanut butter sandwich and his trusty sidekick, domokun...

dramaqueen fell asleep. i wondered why he was so quiet over there.

table manners

why i don't get to nap

so this morning at about 9:30, everyone had eaten breakfast, done their potty bidness, and i was doing a fairly credible job of napping on the couch. dramaqueen was zoned out, too (though this may have been due to the fact that he had wrapped himself in a blanket like a burrito and was slowly starving himself of oxygen.) then EG decides he needs to whip out the camera.

EG: hey MOM, i'm taking pictures!
Me: okay.
EG: roll over so i can take a picture of your face.
Me: no.
EG: *click*



EG: i just took a picture of your butt.
Me: awesome.
EG: hey guys! i have an idea. *unintelligible whispering*
*click*



*giggles and snorts*
*click*



EG: hey mom, you've got to see this!
Me: later.
EG: no, turn around or you'll miss it, HURRY HURRY HURRY!
SM: HURRY!
DQ: WHEEEEEEEEE!
*click*



(note the blanket-toting spazmonkey's rapid approach)

at this point, i got covered in a blanket and jumped on.

Me: dude! a little help here!
EG: just a second. *click*



(apparently, self-portraits are more important than saving mom from twit attacks.)

then i had to extract my revenge, which EG dutifully recorded:



EG then suggested that i play my banjo for him so he could take a picture of that:



then he disappeared out back to document the next game. so, technically, i could attempt a nap again... i'm almost wondering if i couldn't get away with it if i hid out in THEIR room to sleep. they'd never look for me there... of course, if they did, their beds are much lower than mine, and i'd be SCREWED.

Lab monkey... that funky monkey... part 2!

okay, so a while back, spazmonkey went in for labmonkey session #1, a language evaluation in preparation for a three-playdate study on how kids make friends. why do i torture him so? because mommy gets $20 every time he goes in for an hour, AND free babysitting for his two brothers, to boot. the boy is takin one for the team, and we all appreciate it.

okay, so we walk into the building and meet the kid spazmonkey will be playing with for three consecutive thursdays. his name is trogboy, and trogboy is about as uninteresting, unfun, disinterested, and unanimated as any kid i've ever seen. i politely ask trogboy's mom if he's sick, and she's surprised by the question. the kid isn't bored, or tired, or shy, or nervous, and he isn't sick... he's just... existing. as far as he's concerned, breathing is taxing enough, and he really doesn't feel like looking around the room at all the toys, let alone picking any of them up to actually play. i wonder if maybe he just doesn't know what to do with himself without a tv - if that's the case, he isn't the least bit *disturbed* by the lack of tv.

after one token overture (pointing at him, yelling "BOY!", and then grabbing a fireman axe to show him,) that gets no reaction from trogboy whatsoever, spazmonkey picks up on trogboy's utter lack of entertainment value immediately and wants nothing to do with him. so he ran around and played with the toys for twenty minutes, until the child psych grad student came in to clean up the toys and bring out the second set of toys... a table, two chairs, *one* playdoh ice cream truck, and *one* lump of playdoh. yeah. can we see where this is going? "let's give two three-year-olds one toy, and see if they start crying before or after they beat the crap out of each other!" worthy question, and i'm sure parenting magazines across the country will beathlessly report the stunning results of the study for the betterment of parents everywhere.

spazmonkey was busy dancing around the room while trogboy dutifully sat down in the chair provided him, so trogboy - in a stunning display of initiative - puts his hand on the playdoh and dragged it over in front of him first. the moms were given instructions NOT TO INTERACT with the children at all, unless they were about to do something dangerous. i figure that'd be about now. spazmonkey sits down in his chair, looks down at the blank spot of table in front of him, then looks up at the grad student and asks, "where my pwaydoh?" the grad student wisely beats ass out of there.

spazmonkey turns to trogboy, who is still sitting there with his hand on the playdoh. he isn't playing with it. he isn't guarding it. he's just... coexisting with it. "pwaydoh?" spazmonkey asks. trogboy doesn't even turn toward the sound of his voice. again, i don't get the impression that he's studiously ignoring the boy - little kids are not slick, and they're not subtle. if the request had registered and trogboy had decided to deny that request, he would have hunched protectively over the playdoh, stolen glances at spazmonkey, maybe even made a big show of playing with it. nope. nothin. trogboy abides.

"pwaydoh?" this time spazmonkey leans in and says it a little louder. nothin. "PWAYDOH?" spazmonkey was getting a bit frantic now, and holds his hand out by way of politely suggesting that trogboy GIVE UP SOME OF THE DAMN PLAYDOH. i figure this is about to get real ugly, but i could not have been prouder (or more surprised) by the fact that spazmonkey never reeached over and just grabbed the playdoh. playdoh is his favorite toy, period. he had just had a meltdown when we walked into the study and i had to take away the lump of playdoh he had brought in with him - and the grad student had promised him he would get more playdoh later. and there it was... and he wasn't going to take it away from another kid, period. wow. i guess all that parenting crap really does work!

so spazmonkey sits there and cries, wailing "pwaaaaaaaaay-doooooohhhhh!" oh, lord did i feel like a turd for pimping him out for $20. it sucked. then, miraculously, after a full five minutes of this, trogboy temporarily shambles to life, rolling his oversized head around to look at spazmonkey (this may have even been a voluntary motion, though it's impossible to say for sure.) "you wan playdoh?" he asks. he squeezes off a lump of it, and drops it in front of spazmonkey. then his eyes dim again, and he reverts to staring blankly at the wall with one hand resting on his lump of playdoh.

"pwaydoh! yes!" spazmonkey giggles. "wook, a wockmonster!" he shouts. trogboy, having expended all the effort he had for the day, doesn't look around. "ARRRRGGGHHHH!!!" spazmonkey smashes his rockmonster, checking for a reaction from his purported playmate. "wook, boy, wook! a diraffe!" spazmonkey's penis-on-four-legs also fails to excite, so he waves it in front of trogboy's face. trogboy briefly reanimates and makes a swipe for the playdoh. spazmonkey grabs it back, lunges at the boy's face and yells "NO NO NOT MY PWAYDOH DATS MINE YOUR PWAYDOH WIGHT DERE ROOOAAAWWWWRRRRR!" the roar actually elicits a momentary wide-eyed expression that might have even been strong enough to call "surprise," and trogboy backs away and falls out of his chair onto the floor. he sits there for a moment, and i wonder if he's going to bother to get up at all. he eventually does, plopping himself slowly back into his chair, and plopping his hand back onto his lump of playdoh. "you okay boy?" asks spazmonkey. the boy doesn't respond. spazmonkey grunts and goes to work making an ice cream cone. trogboy doesn't move again until the play session was over and his mom instructed him to leave the room.

so the last 15 minutes of the session involve just spazmonkey and the grad student, who asks the boy a bunch of questions about emotions. (trogboy was in another room with a different grad student, presumeably not answering the same questions from a different grad student.)

now, if you remember labmonkey session #1, spazmonkey took great delight in fucking with this poor grad student. that was six months ago, but spazmonkey quickly remembered how easy and fun it was to fuck with this poor guy. first, the guy gives him a bag of rainbow goldfish crackers and a juice box, then he lays out four felt faces with different expressions on them: happy, sad, scared and angry. before even being asked, spazmonkey takes a break from lining up his crackers in color order and blowing bubbles in his juicebox to delare "HAPPY! ANGWY! SCARED! SAD HE'S CWYING GOT A OWIE ON HIS FACE!" the grad student stops looking nervous and says, "wow, that's really good! i've never had a kid who could just name all four of them right out of the gate like that!" yeah. i think the poor guy thought that meant the reast of the session was going to go well.

then the grad student pulls out two puppets with expressionless faces. he explains that one is justin, and one is justin's sister, amy. he explains that he's going to tell some stories about justin and amy, and he wants spazmonkey to tell him how justin feels after each story. spazmonkey looks at him blankly. so, the grad student starts telling the first story:

JUSTIN: hi amy!
AMY: hi justin! would you like some ice cream?
JUSTIN: oh, yummy, ice cream! i love ice cream, thank you! yay, ice cream!

"so, how do you think justin feels?" asks the grad student, gesturing at the line of four felt faces on the table. spazmonkey looks blankly at the guy. "can you pick one face, to show how justin feels when his sister shares ice cream with him?" he asks hopefully. spazmonkey drops out of his chair and makes a big show of marching around the table, looking under and over it, punctuating his search with the occasional indignant "HUH?" when he makes it back around to his chair, he plops down, looks at the grad student, and declares, "DERE'S NO ICE CWEAM." "oh... kay... but how would he feel if he DID have some ice cr-" "DERE'S NO ICE CWEAM HERE!" after a couple more exchanges, the grad student puts a slash in the box on the form on his clipboard, and skips to the next story, in which amy pushes justin down and makes him cry.

now, the grad student doesn't notice this, but i do - spazmonkey's eyes are drawn to the clipboard, and the boy's expression is utter, naked glee when he realizes that this guy is writing down his responses. "so, how do you you think justin felt when his sister pushed him down?" asks the grad student, throwing in some boo-hoo noises and having the puppet rub at his eyes for good measure. spazmonkey, with a shit-eating grin, carefully lines up the four faces, saying "hmmmmmmmmmmmm! how coud he possibwy feeeeeeeel?" if i hadn't been instructed not to interfere, i would have already bopped the kid on the back of the head and told him to quit fucking with the poor guy, but i was honor-bound (by the promise of $20, that is) to do nothing. "coud he be saaaaaaaaaaaaad?" he holds up the sad face and looks at the grad student, waits until the guy is writing down the response, and then yells "OR IS HE SCAAAAAAAAARED?" the little turd giggles when the guy scribbles out his first response to write in the second one. "NO NO NO NO WAIT! DUSDIN IS SAD!" he looks at the guy, who has paused his pen above the paper, wiseley waiting to see if this is the final answer. jabbing his finger at the paper, spazmonkey commands, "WITE DAT DOWN!"

for the last two stories, spazmonkey just ignores the guy, and makes up his own stories using the four emotion faces, yielding exactly zero useable answers.

yep! we'll see him again next week.

one of evilgremlin's patented "this is going NOWHERE!" conversations

so we're walking outside, i'm holding a hand on each twit - and i have YET to get both of them, at the same time, to offer me the "correct" hand, eg, the one on my left giving me his right hand and the one on my right giving me his left hand. oooooh, no, that would be boring. two things as certain as death and taxes when i walk with them: 1) they each have to holding at least two of the following four items: a cup of milk, a bag of chips, some incarnation of buzz light year or darth vader, a wad of play-doh, and 2) at least one of them has to insist that i grab the wrong hand, which inevitably ends with someone falling down. so it was dramaqueen's turn today, and he landed on a knee and scraped it.

EG: wow. i can tell that really hurt.

Me: it's not even bleeding. remember, this is dramaqueen. he screams like this when you accidentally touch his arm walking past him, too.

EG: no, it REALLY set off my hurt vine.

Me: *at a loss for what to say next* huh?

EG: that REALLY set off my HURT VINE. *taps the left side of his forehead for emphasis*

Me: okay.

EG: my hurt vine is in my head. it's a part of my brain, and it goes to my eyes, next to the muscles, so when i see something that hurts, it tells my brain that it hurt.

Me: did you see that in your "human body" book?

EG: they forgot it. i think it's in dad's human body book, though.

Me: yep.

EG: *pauses long enough to buckle his seatbelt as i get the twits in their carseats. this is enough time to completely change the subject, too* mom? do i suck at singing?

Me: no. *oh, sweet monkey christ, yes he does. he sucks hard. boy is as tone deaf as a harmonica in a hobo's ass. sometimes good mommies lie.*

EG: darn.

Me: *once again, i'm at a loss for words. see? i told you this was a "going nowhere" conversation.* uuuhhhh...

EG: if i sucked at singing, i could put twunkies to sleep.

Me: twunkies?

EG: yeah.

Me: what are twunkies?

SM: TWUNKIES! YES!

DQ: twunkies?

EG: they're from outer space.

DQ: ROCKETSHIP!

SM: YES!

Me: are they on tv?

EG: *thoughtful pause* only when you're not looking.

DQ: MCDONALDS!

SM: YESSSSS!

which ended that conversation... before it went anywhere.