Dance...Fight?!

Gaius frenemy Rowan is over for a playdate, and this conversation just happened:

Rowan: “Otay, I’m gonna teach you how to do ballet.”

Gaius:” I know how to ballet.”

Rowan:”IIII went to school. And I FINISHED. So I should teach you.”

Gaius:”Do you know how to ballet FIGHT?!”

Rowan: (matter-of-factly)”Yep. I’m going to pick someone to ballet fight me. Eeny meeny miney mo…Daius! You ballet fight me.”

Gaius: (going immediately into a Mario/Link-style spin attack) “AAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!!!”

Rowan:”NO! Not like that. I know a special Chinese style.”

Gaius:”But we didn’t have Chinese yet. I like Chinese. Do you like Chinese?”

Rowan:”I LOOOOVE Chinese!”

And they collapse onto the floor in a fit of giggles.

Try the Spaghetti, Freddie

So, I make all this delicious food, these tasty dishes, these culinary masterpieces, and you wanna know what my children scream are "DELICIOUS!" and beg for more when I add them to their lunch plate and throw a fucking shit-fit when there aren't any? Crackers. Plain boring old bland motherfucking saltines. Fucking. Hell. On the plus side, I see a drastically reduced grocery bill in the near future...

Follow the Butterflies

I love sitting in the cool shade of the cedar tree, watching my boy play with the chicke-OH MY GOD THERE ARE ONE JILLION SPIDER BABIES RAPPELLING ONTO MY FACE! GAHHHHHH!!! GETEMOFFGETEMOFFGETEMOFGETEMOFF!

I love you, Nature. Why you fuck with me like that?

Know When to Hold 'Em...

The kids are playing an imaginary card game in the pool called Got Your Wish where the cards are only visible underwater, and are guts, fish, 33's, rocket fuel, apples, and couscous. But no privates. But belly buttons. Actually, a hundred things on the whole world. And the cards are SUPPOSED to be green. Oh, and synchronized splashing is shuffling and dealing the cards. So randomly they all stop together and splash frantically, then stop splashing and resume playing. I <3 my creepy little weirdos.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

R:If I fell, like out of this tree, and my arm broke, I'd be just like mommy.

Me:Do you WANT to be just like mommy?

R:(Eying the ground intently)Mayyybeee...

Me:You get the fuck out of that tree.

We are Controlling Transmission

The twins are censoring themselves.

"I'm gonna pop some taaags, only got twenny dollahs and my pocket-"

"No, not "and." "In.""

"Well, I'm gonna sing it whatever I want."

(together) IIIIIIIII'N GONNA POP SOME TAGS, ONLY GOT TWENNY DOLLAHS IN/AND MY POCKET, UH UH AHM HUNTIN', LOOKIN'FOR A COMEUP, THIS IS BLEEPING AWESOME!!!"

"I wear your Grandads clothes, I look in-cred-uh-bull-"

"You DO look incredible."

"I know! You like my dress?"

"It's bleeping AWESOME!"

Gaius:(at the top of his lungs)"LINK! HAS COME TO TOWN! HAS COME TO SAVE! THE PRINCESS ZEEELLLDAAA!"

Cue riotous laughter.

That bitch be cray cray...

Guest post by my sweet love! -Greybeard

*   *   *

So there we were, all five of us waiting impatiently for the train with our week's groceries. Some random young woman (who shall henceforth be known as Crazy Lady. For simplicity’s sake) was talking at some other woman about how petite women and non-petite woman gain weight differently, and that SHE (Crazy Lady) was TRULY a petite woman, which is why she gained the way she did, so it wasn't really her fault that she weighed 400 pounds.

Okie dokie, then.

Then she walks up to us and this was the conversation that followed (please forgive any paraphrasing; this was way too much crazy to remember verbatim)…

Crazy Lady: "I have a question for you. Well... I haven't actually formulated a REAL question yet... but you all are wearing greens and look very natural and your kids are wearing unusual clothes, and that looks like some kind of skirt on your son*, and they have the most amazing blue eyes and I was just wondering about you guys."

*(Side note: our 6yo DS wears skirts or dresses sometimes - he usually calls them kilts, and the one he was wearing today was dark khaki with pockets like a utilikilt)

Grey: “Ok, what do you want to know?”

(Me glaring at Grey for opening up this conversation.)

CL: “Well, like, what’s your heritage and faith?”

Grey: “Just mixed up Americans. And agnostic atheist.”

CL: “So what’s your blood type?”

Grey: “What? No. I don’t want to share that with you. That’s a bit bizarre... Why do you want to know?”

CL: “Seriously, is it positive or negative?”

Grey: “Seriously, I’m not gonna tell you.”

CL: “Well, I was just asking because…” The following are a few of the highlights of her next five minutes of talking nonstop… 

• Because her blood type is negative, Crazy Lady is of angelic lineage. (O_O) 
• Crazy Lady’s mom was adopted (not pertinent to the conversation, unless she thinks her mom’s real parents were angels) 
• Crazy Lady “became a Christian and read the bible” ALL BY HERSELF “with no help from anyone” while residing in some kind of psychiatric home 
• Crazy Lady KNOWS that she's directly descended from the nephilim because of the giants dying out, and that the blood typing and extinct giants are all spelled out in genesis, which makes it literally true. 

One thing you might not want to do is misquote the bible to an ex- Jehovah's Witness who has read the bible 8 bazillion times. 

Grey: "Oh, wow, they did blood typing back then?" (some random bystander giggled) “Anyway, I didn't know mythological creatures even HAD blood types.”

CL (balking momentarily): “Well it’s all written there, in Genesis, so it’s true. Also? Your children’s eyes are AMAZING. They MUST be Indigo Children with eyes like that.”

Grey: “What the hell does that mean?”

CL: “Well, eyes that color mean they’re descended from angels, too.”

Grey (lifting sunglasses): "Um, their eyes are that color because that's the color of my eyes. It’s genetic. For real.”

CL: “Well, anyway, I’ve been thinking of getting married recently. BUT, I don’t know if it will work because the guy I like doesn't want to raise kids in the city, so we'd have to move to Montana out in the country..."

Then our train arrived and we boarded and laughed and laughed and laughed.

And that was our weekend’s entertainment. 

I've faaalllen, and I can't get uuuuuup...

Sweet crap on a cracker. Why do people not understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? When my son falls, or coughs on some water, or runs full tilt into a tree, and I don't move to help him, and you do, and I say "Please leave him alone," and you don't stop, and I get louder, and you don't listen, and I tell you "DON'T TOUCH MY CHILD," I am not asking - or giving permission - for you to go pick him up and nurse his boo-boos. Leave. Him. Alone. 

I thought for awhile that it was just me that had to deal with this. You know - at-home dad, "doesn't have the ability to nurture" (yes, I've been told this), maybe they think I'm lazy or neglectful, but it doesn't seem to be limited to just me. I've seen many moms deal with this same issue. The part that really annoys me is when it's other moms with kids the same age. If it's a grandma, or an older lady, I can understand if they are hard of hearing or whatever, but when it's a mom with kids in the same age group and they run over to my child to kiss their owie and make it better - what the hell, lady?! NO TOUCHY! No touch. 

I am not a heartless monster. I am not inattentive. I simply don't see the need to mollycoddle. I am not raising a helpless baby - I am raising a child, a person, an individual. I want him to assess himself, to see what the damage is, to be able to determine what is attention-worthy, and what is just a bump, a scrape, a little water down the wrong pipe. I want him to learn independent thought and personal strength. To know that he can take care of himself. Because if he really needs me, I will be there in a flash. 

I know my child. You don't. And the one thing I definitely know about my child that you don't - but you will find out in about 2 seconds - is that he hates being touched without his consent. That boy has a very close bubble that surrounds him, and anyone entering that bubble better have his express permission to do so, or there will be hell to pay. So when he blows out your eardrums with his siren scream, bloodies your nose with a right cross, and kicks your tit off, don't look at me like I raised some kind of demon. I asked you, I told you, I raised my voice at you not to touch him. It's on your head. 

You can't handle the tooth!

Good times. The twins have both discovered they have loose teeth. It's going to be a goddamn faeriefest up in here. That's gotta be, what- 4500 teeth? And guess who gets to assist in their removal?  Yeahhh...as I stated - good times. Really, it wouldn't be that big a deal, but the boy has this ear-shattering fire engine wail whenever he's in panic mode that on a good day I can't stand to be in the same room with him while he's crying. Now I will be right next to his screaming facehole. Joy. The cool bit, though, it's that I can drill holes through the teeth once they're yanked and wear them as a necklace. Yay! Accessories!

If I Only Had a Brain

Romana: "Mom, I have two parts of my brain, and the man side says 'hey, baby' to the girl side. Yeah, my brain can talk."

Gaius: "Mom, my bwain don't talk."