Things my 2-year-old son has recently licked

After a bit of a lull in such explorations, my 2-year-old son E- has lately rededicated himself to the cause of more fully probing this world of ours through every sensory-input-gathering device available to him.

This noble effort often results in him putting many things in or on his mouth-parts that lesser men would likely fail to even consider attempting.

Here's a selection of some of the most noteworthy just from the past week or so:

1. The floor, many times

2. The underside of the counter where the kids eat most often*

3. The bottom of his shoe

4. The bottom of a few other people's shoes

5. The strap of his car seat**

6. The rim of a garbage can I'd just bought from a thrift shop***

7. The bristles of our small hand broom that has seen a good ten years' use, in all conditions, in several states***

8. An old plastic fork he found in our garage

I shudder to think what else he'll think of tasting without us even realizing we needed to warn him not to.

That's the advantage of being a world-changer instead of a nay-sayer, I guess. Good luck, little buddy! You are a worthy opponent.

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* Thus making it the grossest part of the counter.

** This one, like the first one, kind of goes without saying, but it's worth including anyway just because a kid's car seat is among the more germ-infested places in the world, including the toilet (which gets washed much more frequently), especially for a family that takes as many car trips as we do...

*** These two were in the same day, only about an hour apart!

A conversation with M- and D-: How many licks does it take?

The following is a recent conversation I had with my 8-year-old son D- and 5-year-old daughter M-, the tone of which is predictably not all that rare around here:

D- (sharing an announcement with the world) : She LICKed meeeeee!

M- (feebly beginning a defense): No...

Me: M-, did you lick him?

M- (thinking better of it): Yes... Because he was being a jerk, and wouldn't stop!

Me: It's not a good strategy to use your germs as a weapon. And it's never a good idea to ever LICK an 8-year-old...

D- (almost proudly): Yeah, especially THIS one!

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You may enjoy my previous D- conversations, M- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

Amusing searches, Vol. 9

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, ones so odd they don't really need a theme beyond that.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and the search text links to the post at which the visitor arrived.)

• douche storm (Pierrelatte, France) - Since the word "douche" sounds Frenchy (and the concept seems like a French idea, frankly), I'm pretty sure it means the same thing to you as it does to me... in which case I just have to run this search myself to see what comes up. Maybe it's some kind of new kinky French thing? Or else some kind of frat initiation somewhere... say, Southern California?

• fatal orgasm (Bedford, UK) - Hey, I thought I invented that! Wow, you learn something new every day... I've now decided the central tenet of my living will. Why merely pull the plug on someone when you could instead pull something else to send them away so much... less clinically?

• amelia earhart homosexual (Vancouver, WA) - As has now been clearly established, she could only have been a homosexual if the objects of her affection were carefully woven of magical thread.

• pictures of iguana poop (Plymouth, UK) - Sorry, no pictures. Just the facts, ma'am.

• why people don't like nervous people (Birmingham, UK) - If I knew that, I wouldn't spend so many nights crying myself to sleep, buddy.

• loving things to write in an anniversary card to your parents (Winterville, GA) - Oh, I don't know, how about something like:

Dearest Mother and Father,
Everything I feel about you, I found through a Google search.
Happy Anniversary! ...and stuff...
Somebody else loves their parents very much.

Sincerely,
Not That Person

• Percentage of students with herpes at Northeastern University (Stow, MA) - Hmmmm... these days? I'm gonna say 60%.

A conversation between M- and D-: You gotta watch out for those zombie ground squirrels

The following is part of a Monty-Python-esque conversation my 6-year-old son D- and 3-year-old daughter M- had today with their noses pressed against the patio doors, watching the frolicking of the new litter born to our thirteen-lined ground squirrel friends "Nibble Purple" and "Sunflower Stripehead".*

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of asking my wife aloud if a little thing near them in the grass was a dead sibling. The flies shortly confirmed this suspicion, and the kids then became intensely focused on this one instead of all the unbearably cute and very alive ones.

M- (trying desperately to find it): Is that the dead one?

D- (patiently): No, it's the one that's not moving.

M-: Is that one it? ...No, it's moving. ...Is that one it? No, it's moving, too.

D- (authoritatively): All the ones that are moving are dead.

M- (buying it, but just trying to make sure she has it straight): All the ones that are moving are dead?

D- (as if she misheard him): No, all the ones that are moving are NOT dead-- they're alive. All the ones that are NOT moving are dead.

M-: Oh.

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* Guess who named them.

BlogHer notes from an outsider

Since I'm still seeing other people's BlogHer recaps popping up every day, I don't feel so bad about procrastinating this long. For those who don't care, this is one and done.

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It probably says a lot about me, especially during my current phase of life, that when a convention comes to town that has HER in the title, I just can't wait to hop on the train and head downtown.

But when you blog about your kids as much as I do, you tend to read and be read by bloggers who also write about their kids. The world being what it is, that means I hang with chicks most the time. Online, anyway.

But BlogHer coming here to Chicago meant that I had the rare opportunity to meet a lot of these people in person, which was at once exciting and terrifying. If I was the kind of person to throw myself into social situations with people I don't know very well, then I probably wouldn't sit by myself writing on the internet so much. I'd probably be running some company that made popular things for popular people. And I'd have a lot more money. And I'd sit on my ergonomic toilet seat staring at magazines with my own face (and abs) on the cover, wondering if I'd ever stop shitting solid gold bricks.*

But whether that's a more desirable life than mine or not is neither here nor there. The fact is, I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday a couple weeks ago showing up with my wife at the Chicago Sheraton without conference passes, and without knowing what venues would be available for us to meet people without accosting them at cabstands and bathroom sinks.

And you know what? It was awesome.

Except for that pesky day in the middle on which I actually wondered if I might die on the bathroom floor at a fancy hotel, just like a life-conquering celebrity but without the drugs or success.

So if you saw me on Friday and wondered why I looked so surly and distant (sorry Neil and Suzanne), it's only because I was intently trying not to vomit and/or internally debating the best position in which to lie in case I got a choice moments before death's icy finger tagged my soul out to send some fresh meat into the Diarrhea Olympics.

Before all that, though, I got to spend some quality time with Middle-Aged Woman (Unmitigated) and Muskrat, meet Black Hockey Jesus and Tanis (Redneck Mommy), and then wonder how the hell I was going to find anyone else in the mass of humanity who wasn't introduced to me by someone else. Heck, we spent well over an hour at the SociaLuxe party playing with customizable name bracelets without meeting a soul I knew. Sure, I saw Jenny the Bloggess and Kristen Chase (Motherhood Uncensored) but was too timid to interrupt their respective series of conversations with nothing but an awkward introduction, but that doesn't really count.

While waiting for the People's Party later that night, I recognized Miss Grace, who introduced me to Matthew from Child's Play x2 among others. Then once the party started I rejoined my wife, who'd spent an hour or two packing swag bags with Middle-Aged Woman, only to find out that she not only had met Jenny the Bloggess (and Nancy W. Kappes!), but she got a Bloggess sticker she was specifically forbidden to give me.** I figure since I was meeting Black Hockey Jesus at that time, it kind of evens out, cosmically.***

I somewhat redeemed myself later by saying hi to Momo Fali, Kristen, and Brittany (Barefoot Foodie), but overall I was so overwhelmed I missed far more opportunities than I seized, which was made especially tragic by Friday's aforementioned chaos. So much for getting my feet wet on Thursday and making the most out of Friday.

I convinced myself on Friday afternoon that despite some stomach pain, I felt okay enough to soldier through the evening as long as I didn't risk eating anything. I hadn't thrown up yet at that point and I figured I must be suffering no more than the effects of eating at IHOP at 2am the night before, instead of battling some kind of flesh-eating virus hell-bent on liquefying my insides, as my foe was later to be revealed.

My late arrival on the scene Friday is the root cause of numerous missed connections with awesome people like Maggie and Mike Adamick, and my lack of organization and outgoingness is the cause of my missing out on dozens more people I should have met somewhere, somehow in the crowds.

After being turned away from the MamaPop party by none other than Mrs. 4444 herself (just doing her duty as the lady with the checklist), I took that as a sign I should give up defiling the absolutely vacant bathrooms (but I bet the lines at the women's bathrooms were epic) of the Sheraton and call it a night at the relatively early hour of 10pm. That hour is for me, unfortunately for my overall health, much like 6:30 is for normal people.

Turns out, of course, we missed the best party of the conference, and a unicorn cake. A unicorn cake!

But the rest did me good (specifically the sporadic series of naps in a bath/shower and the patient nursing of my wife), as did the tentatively resumed ability to absorb small amounts of fluids for the first time in over 12 hours. Fluids make the hallucinations go away! Well, most fluids do, anyway.

So we showed up Saturday evening in time to meet longtime readers MamaNeena and Andrea (Sweet Life) and have a good talk (wishing we'd had more time to hang out that night and earlier in the weekend) before heading over to Quartino for dinner [picture] with Middle-Aged Woman, Vodka Mom, Sprite's Keeper, Stiletto Mom, DeeMarie, Shopgirl, Amo, and Jill-- we hadn't been here before but we definitely want to come back. J- because she wants more of what she ordered, and me because I'd like to go there when I can actually eat food.

We then headed to the bowling alley for BowlHer, which, due to the brain-squashing noise, was not good for meeting people you didn't already know. However, it was very good for getting stuff, since it was co-sponsored by several numerous companies. How can you go wrong with free cupcakes, wine, chocolate, and gift cards?

After deciding we'd had enough of the noise, we headed back to the Sheraton to check out the CheezeburgHer Party, which would have been 10x better if I was better able to eat by this point. We mostly just sat on a very comfortable couch in the presidential suite realizing how tired we were, but we were happy to get the chance to meet Elisa (Unlikely Housewife) after trying to coordinate a meetup all day. We then headed the 32 floors downstairs, where I met Backpacking Dad on my way to the bathroom.

I passed on sticking it out any longer in case tiredness made me relapse, and we reluctantly headed for home with about 30 pounds of swag (thanks largely to all those wine bottles people flying home had to give away). How strange we must have looked to non-blogging civilians on our ride home-- good thing we left the pink feather boa from BowlHer at the CheezeburgHer Party.

Still, with all the tote bags filled with food and pink or leopard print odds and ends, I might as well have been wearing my new blogging shirt and singing at the top of my lungs.

Anyway, if we met you there, we were glad to meet you, and if we didn't, we were sad we didn't. I don't think we'll make it out to New York next year, but that's not for lack of desire. Here's hoping against hope anyway that we'll see you all there!

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* Or maybe eggs, more likely, because I'm pretty sure people like that don't have to put up with inconveniences like sharp corners.

** And then she goes and taunts me by just leaving her leftover stickers in the bathroom for normal people to be confused by.

*** Except that I'm still pathetically devastated I never got to meet Jenny.

Dispatches from 2:30 in the morning

While trying to get back around to sorting out what I'd write for my obligatory BlogHer recap post, (after procrastinating by finishing off the hilarious and amazing How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely), I was treated to the following foreboding statement from my shockingly sophisticated 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter M-:

"Momma? Daddy? I burped accidentally and now Woof and my pillow and my sheets are all dirty."

Yes, we confirmed that means exactly what you think it means.

So whatever virus came in with the Thursday crowds at BlogHer has taken a third victim, as my wife J- has been recovering in relative splendor and comfort compared to my evening (and particularly my train ride home) on Friday.

Sorry to anyone to whom I may have spread this germ at the conference-- I only came back Saturday evening because I thought I'd had food poisoning (I even had a post all ready about it) and I felt okay enough to seize this wonderful opportunity once again.

Suddenly, I bet Jenny the Bloggess feels somewhat less disappointed about not getting to meet me. Though I'm sure when she met my unfairly lucky wife (who had wandered off with Middle-Aged Woman from Unmitigated) while rushing somewhere alongside THE Nancy W. Kappes, Paralegal, she was exposed to enough of the germs to satisfy my need for schadenfreude.

I mean, how dare she not seek out one of her legion of pathetic followers by holding up a handheld blue-tube filter over each man's face at the convention??

...Now that I think about it, that probably would have taken 10 minutes, tops. Hiding out as a man at BlogHer would be like hiding out as a transsexual on a Guess Who? board. Actually, that would be a perfect pro-level enhancement for Milton Bradley to add.

Anyway, I've had a fun night reminiscing about all the things we fed my daughter yesterday, and now that she's been back to sleep for awhile in what's left of her bed, I figure I should go lay down and cue the next round.

IL to ME Odyssey: Illinois

I figured I'd break down my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine into a series of short posts of thoughts on our time in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and almost all of Maine.

For a bonus, on our way home we also added Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

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ILLINOIS
Distance Traveled: 30 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

• We started out the trip only about an hour behind a schedule we never intended to keep, but then my 5-year-old son D-, who had recently fallen at my parents' house and hit his head, said he had a headache.

Coming from a kid who is as oblivious to such concepts as can be, we figured we had to get his doctor's opinion on how we should handle this. She, of course, said we should bring him in to the emergency room to confirm he was okay.

Thankfully, they said he was fine, but this meant we were now leaving several hours behind schedule, and just in time to catch the beginning of rush hour in Chicago.

• Before we left the ER, the very nice doctor helpfully offered the kids popsicles for their trouble, which might sound wonderful until you remember we were just getting into the car. My 2-year-old daughter M-, to say nothing of her older brother, is so proficient at making messes that she has been known to somehow create a permanent stain on furniture with a single piece of popcorn placed directly in her mouth, while you stare at her chewing it.

• A combination of slow rush hour traffic and my children's desire to see me repeatedly bash my skull into unconsciousness against a car window had us stopping for a bathroom break about 10 miles from our house. Now, if you've been in gas station bathrooms before, you pretty much know what you're getting into each time, so the one side benefit is you can only be pleasantly surprised.

But this particular gas station we picked, from a choice of about 63 within a two-mile radius, happened to possess the exception to this rule. When I scouted ahead and asked the attendant about the facilities, he responded cryptically that, "it's kind of out of order... but you can use it if you don't mind."

Without having even the slightest picture in my mind of what I was agreeing to, I said that was fine, since the kids had to go and we were here. I didn't add that I absolutely had to know what he could have meant by "kind of out of order," regardless of my kids' willingness to endure it.

When I came back with the kids, he pointed me over to what (oddly) was left of the entry to a short hallway mostly blocked by a refrigerated display case, but he said we'd have to wait since someone else had just gone in.

When the man walked out a few minutes later, I didn't think he was nearly broken-up enough about the fact that, in his succinct words, "it splashed me in the face."

Given this setup, I was actually disappointed, rather than pleasantly surprised, to find that this toilet merely had no tank lid, a broken flush chain, minor staining, and absolutely no toilet paper. A roll of paper borrowed from the store shelf allowed me to impenetrably protect the kids from germs, and a simple lack of flushing avoided any unwanted toilet-water showers.

And like that, plus a few hearty foot swipes on the rug at the exit, we had notched the lowest marker on our road-trip bathroom ladder, meaning it was all looking up from there. I waved a thank you to the attendant on our way out, not envying him for the puddles he'd be standing in later when opening the enormous safe in the corner of the bathroom, and we headed back into our place in the rush hour conga line slowly carrying us out towards the open road.

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Thankfully, not every state boasted anything as traumatic as this, so you won't be getting 10 individual posts after this one. I promise.

Awkward moments, Vol. 1

As an antidote to all those ubiquitous Precious Moments things, here are a few of the most Awkward Moments my children have seen fit to drag me into, just in the past week and a half.

Please note that while I include the word "loudly" in all three entries, I'm sure you know I had no need to mention it even once.

1. While enduring an excessively long checkout process at the store, my 2-year-old daughter M- loudly pointed out that supermodel Giselle Bunchen, posing effectively in the nude on the cover of this month's Vanity Fair, had no shirt on, before speculating that "the lady [was] going to take a shower, probably," and then following up in graphic detail with all the steps she would be taking next.

2. Walking by a woman carrying her child with a beautiful (and probably very expensive) head of cornrows, M- and her 5-year-old brother D- said hi, each referring to the child as a different sex (due to this apparently unfamiliar hairstyle and ambiguous clothing colors), and then they began loudly debating whether it was a boy or a girl, including the heretofore uncharted territory of a "boy-girl".*

3. Just days before the normally large Immigration Rally here in Chicago, and in the midst of all this swine flu nonsense, a Hispanic busboy** began clearing our table while we were gathering up our supplies to leave a local pizza pub, and the kids coincidentally decided to start very loudly chanting the refrain from one of their recent favorite books (Gotta Go by Sam Swope): "Gotta go to Mexico!!"

Luckily for us, neither of them were frowning or pointing at the time they issued this grammatically ambiguous statement/command.

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* For the record, I had been 99% sure it was a girl until I heard these two arguing. I don't feel too badly about this uncertainty, given the number of times D- was misidentified as a girl in his first 2 years of life, and the handful of times M- was as a boy, but if anyone ever thought either was a boy-girl/girl-boy, they had the decency to keep it to themselves.

** Seems a demeaning job title, considering that the guy is at least 40. But "Busman" just sounds like a really, really low-budget superhero. Like Batman if he wasn't a billionaire. Guy's gotta get around somehow, right?

No, Babe won't give you herpes

Consider this post an early Mother's Day present for my mom, who for the past two weeks has been ranting about how inane the swine flu hysteria is almost as fiercely as I do about random things like the suddenly high percentage of crossword puzzle clues relating to rap/hip-hop in the Tribune lately.*

I've endured this "swine flu" nonsense for about as long as I can take, and while I usually steadfastly ignore fads that try to compel me to acknowledge them with at least outrage or satire, I just couldn't resist after reading this article:

Flu fears alter life at U.S. universities

No, the take-home lesson of this article is NOT how easily life can be drastically thrown off its axis by overhyped paranoia spread by 24-hour news outlets,** but rather how little a college degree is apparently worth in America today.

To celebrate the latest inductees into the elite club that is the enormous percentage of our extremely populous country that has graduated from college, the wizened elders of the prestigious Northeastern University scrambled to make sure there were sufficient quantities of anti-bacterial lotion on hand at the graduation ceremony Friday to combat the (excruciatingly inefficient, it seems) killer virus that has so many people helpfully pitching their pork chops into the trash heap these days.***

Neighbor dogs have never eaten so well! And they won't again until the killer bacteria, perfected by the hyperactive evolution chamber that is our modern "anti-bacterial" society, finally emerges to leave us all as main courses in the Gutter Buffet our dogs will treasure until the germ can tweak itself enough to take them out, too.

Happy Wednesday!!

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* I pick an example like this just because I don't want to dare imply that she's even flirted with the intensity of my rants about the few things that matter more than my weekly State Of The Crossword speech.

** So far, this new strain of known flus has proven to be equally as infectious as every other common flu virus, and, by my observation, dramatically less lethal. So if you haven't died from a flu in the past, even if a few viruses manage to perform the near-impossible feat of getting past your force field of Purell, you probably won't die this time, either.

If you HAVE died from a flu in the past, well, let me apologize for my smarmy tone, and also for the overly chewy texture of my precious, delicious BRAAAAAAIIIINSSSSS!!!

*** Just to re-state for the record, and not because I have any particular love for the pork industry, eating pork can NOT give you any kind of swine flu. If you're worried about eating the flesh of an infected animal, your biggest concern should be nothing more than whether that pig's final coughing fits toughened up the meat too much and made it slightly less delicious than that of its blissfully immobile and fatty compatriots.

Classic quotes, Vol. 12

Here are the latest quotes from my 5-year-old son D- and 2-year-old daughter M-:

M- (responding to my protest at her using her forehead to block another girl from playing in a little firehouse at the library): But I told her it's 'Un-a-BAIL-able'!

D- (after drinking generic Sprite for a day or so while sick, having had his eyes opened to a previously unexplored kingdom of sinful deliciousness): Now that I'm used to this drink, I want it for Every. Day.

M- (announcing when she can use a pen): I can have one when I'm bigger... and old.

D- (whispering to my mom after she put him to bed while babysitting the kids): Can you stay till Momma and Daddy get home?

M- (in an appropriate situation, though I'm not sure where she heard it): Holy Moses!

Can you dig it?

You know the best way to derail a quick walk to get Momma some 7-Up to settle her stomach? A giant hole in the street being filled by gravel dumped from a big loud truck and patted by the scoop of a backhoe.

I tried, but not very hard, to push past it and tell D- we'd check it out after our errand, but I knew before I said anything that this was a lost cause. It's like telling Ponce De Leon to make a mental note to further inspect that mysteriously glowing pond at a more convenient time.

So we stood and watched.

And watched.

And watched some more.

For some reason, several people walking by and looked at us like maybe somehow there was something more sinister at work than a 3-year-old boy's transfixion with his favorite toys wrought larger than life. People are weird sometimes.

He didn't get to operate any of the machinery this time, like he did this summer after we watched a crane replace the HVAC unit on the roof of a hardware store, but he was still pretty satisfied. Plus, one of the workers waved to us, which helps reaffirm D-'s carefully cultivated belief in the general politeness of people. Boy, is he in for a rude awakening at some point.

Till then, he's as pure as the new-fallen snow that's kept J- home from work (as a special ed teacher) for the past two days. Once life got word of this windfall, of course, it made sure to leave her deathly ill for the entire time. I guess on the bright side, that's two sick days she can use later.