If he’s gonna come in HERE, he’s gonna kick MY ass!

My favorite part of this video is how hard the mother is trying not to laugh. Story of my life. Like yesterday when Bug asked where girls pee pee from and I said “Girls pee pee from their vaginas.” And Bug looked at me sternly and said, “Mama, NO. That [...]

On the way home from lunch

(from the back seat) “Mama look what I can do!”
(wrenching awkwardly around to see) “What can you do?”
(transferring a rock from hand to hand in a complicated fashion) “See first you do dis and then you spin it around like dis and then you go it around like dis, and then you stop it like [...]

I think I’ll go inside the bank from now on

Drive Up Bank Teller: Welcome to Wachovia!
Me: Hello.
Bug: (from back seat) Mama.
Me: (closing the tube and sending it whooshing back through the tube) Just a sec, Bug.
Teller: Just a deposit today?
Bug: Mama!
Me: Hold on, Bug. (to teller) Yes, just a deposit. Oh, and could we get a [...]

Why Bug doesn’t get a say in the naming of our next child

I’m changing a particularly heinous diaper and Bug is chattering away about a small stuffed elephant that he has resurrected from his often neglected stuffed animal pile.
“Mama, look at this baby elephant, he’s so cute!”
“He is cute buddy, I like that elephant.”
“He’s a girl, Mama.”
“Oh, well you should call it a she then. She’s [...]

I can hold it, and also impart wisdom. The full package.

“I have to go to the potty Bug, do you have to go?”
“Yeah! I have to pee-pee!”
“That’s great Bug! But we can’t go until we get home, so you have to tell your body to hold it.”
“What is ‘hold it’?”
“It’s how you keep the pee-pee in your body. You hold it in.”
“But [...]

Mama why you makin’ that face?

Bug has two forms of question asking. The first is Questions Ad Nauseam, which makes you want to reach into your ear canal with an ice pick and stab and stab until you reach blissful silence. The second is Questions From Your Very Conscience, which slay you in one stealthy blow with their [...]

One afternoon, at the park

We’re playing Bug’s favorite game, “Run Down the Big Hill”. I don’t know why the city bothers spending money on swings and slides, really.
Two kids appear from the baseball field at the top of the hill and run down to the bottom, while Bug and I watch.
Bug stares after them for a long time.
“Mommy?” [...]

Reason #83

We’re waiting on Lorso to bring our food to the table at Boston Market, so I strike up a conversation with Bug.
“Bug, guess what day is coming soon? Like in two days?”
He grins and looks at me slyly. “Tuesday!”
“Well, yes, Tuesday, but what day will it be? What special day?”
“Christmas Day!”
“That’s right, and [...]

Two strange and kind of related facts about my kid

THING ONE
Bug has a serious car fetish. He loves him some cars. But one thing Bug cannot tolerate is when real cars park on grass. It hurts him in his very soul. Whenever we encounter cars that are participating in this disgusting habit, Bug cannot focus on any other thing until [...]

Bug, Master of Unanswerable Questions

“Mama, is that way right or left?”
“That’s left.”
“But I thought that was right.”
“Well, it’s left.”
“But why it’s not right?”
“Because it’s left.”
“But why it is left?”
(At this point, my brain liquefied and oozed out of my ear.)
“Because it just IS.”
“But why it is left?”
(And then I pulled it, the trump card.)
“Because I said so.”
And he [...]