Such strange things

When I found out I was pregnant with Lottie, there were lots of things I swore I would never do as a parent.  I wouldn’t get angry, I wouldn’t feed her any junk food, I wouldn’t let her watch television, etc.  Most of what I promised I wouldn’t do went out the window pretty quickly.  I mean, I figured out within a pretty short time that parents have to do whatever it takes to get through the day sometimes.  One thing I didn’t count on was the weird, odd, and hilarious utterances that would come out of my mouth as a mom. 

The other night, I was reading to Dallas before bedtime.  As of late, Dallas’s nighttime routine involves going to bed with his shoes on while clutching a sword in one hand and a hook in another.  In the middle of a book, I noticed Dallas slowly reaching for his face with his hook.  As I watched in horror, the hook went straight for his nose.  “Dallas!  Don’t pick your nose with your hook!”  And if that’s not weird enough, two minutes later I had to say, “Dallas!  Don’t pick MY nose with your hook!” 

When I was planning all my supermom tricks while I was pregnant, I never once thought about how I would deal with nudity.   Mind out of the gutter, people.  Not MY nudity, the kids’ nudity.  Dallas prefers to be fully dressed at all times, preferably like a pirate, but Lottie would be all nude, all the time if I would let her.  She tends to run around the house in just her underwear.  While it was cute when she was two years old, it’s not so cute now that she’s almost five.  (By the way, when did that happen???)  About two weeks ago, she was flitting around the house in her Tinkerbell underpants when the doorbell rang.  A normal person would think, “Gee, someone is ringing our doorbell.  Perhaps I should hide myself or put on some clothes.”  But not my girl.  She yelled, “THE DOORBELL!” and sprinted to the front door.  I ran down the hall after her shouting, “Lottie, answering the door in your underwear is totally not cool!” 

And when both kids are playing together, there are usually lots of opportunities for me to get in some zingers.  Lottie recently went through a rather bizarre licking stage.  Instead of kisses, Trevor and I got good night licks.  Needless to say, that phase didn’t last very long because it was gross.  But I lost count of the number of times that I had to say, “Lottie, please stop licking your brother’s head!” 

Just this morning, I had to have a stern talk with Dallas about spitting.  “I know you’re pretending like you’re a bloody skull, Dal, but you can’t spit on Lottie’s head and tell her you’re bleeding on her.  That’s nasty, buddy.” 

What can I say?  My conversations with the kids go from serious to funny to exasperating to hilarious.  One thing they never are is boring.