Anatomy Lesson

Gotta love it when kids ask those unanswerable questions. Today, during a visit to Barnes and Noble with Seth, he spotted a book cover bearing a photo of a skeleton half buried in the dirt.
He stared at it for close to a minute, then leaned into me and whispered, "Mom, do your testicles (not the word he actually used) have bones?"
"No," I answered, then asked the fateful question. "Why?"
He pointed to the skeleton's sacral bone. "Look," he said. "That's a bone."
"That's in the back," I explained, patting his tiny little tush. "Not the front. It's called the tailbone."
Seth stared at the book cover again. "No fair!" he exclaimed. "How come he get to have a tail?"

Randomness

It's been way too long since I've blogged, but with the holidays, work insanity (don't ask because I will tell you) and the onslaught of school-related stuff (chorus performances, holiday parties, and homework, homework, homework) I haven't been able to think straight.
So, just a couple of recent small moments:
Kyle's comment on my aunt's most delicious Thanksgiving repast: "This gravy is a work of art!" He was also quite thrilled with the crab salad appetizer and the marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, as well as the turkey.
Jesse's happiness and NOT getting his name on the board at school for talking too much. He even gets stickers when he's particularly quiet. He's been dutifully pasting the stickers into his very own personal at-home notebook, so he can record for posterity the evidence of his self-control.
Jesse organizing the left-over Halloween candy (I brought most of it into work, but there's still a big bag hanging around the house). Every couple of days he takes the big bag out and sorts the candy by type (ie; mini-Butterfingers in one pile, mini-Peanut M & M bags in another), then places each type into its own Baggie. He is quite pleased with his organizational skills, though I'm not sure what this says about his future.
Seth getting annoyed with his teacher for some unfathomable reason: "Mom, when it's my birthday at school, Mr. R is NOT getting a cupcake!"
And, of course, endless holiday lists. Seth started his in September. Guess I better get on it.

Hippies and Mohawks

Do you not just love it when your kids get language and/or concepts totally wrong? Here are a couple of my guys' recent misadventures with words.
Seth: I want to be a hippie when I grow up.
Me: What does being a hippie mean? What do hippies do?"
Seth: They drink a lot of root beer. A lot, lot.
Me: And then what happens?
Seth, with a sigh: "Mom, root beer? They're drunked."

Next conversation, following Jesse's forced haircut--which itself followed Jesse's mangling of his bangs with kid scissors.
Jesse: My hair is too short. Why did we have to cut it?
Me: Because you cut your own bangs and they looked ridiculous.
Jesse: But now I look more ridiculous. I look like I have a mohawg.
Me: A mohawk?
Jesse: No, a mohawg, like a hobo has.
Me: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Dog Hair

This morning, Seth informed me that when he is a grownup, he will not only have a dog ( notice the continuing dog theme in his conversations?), but he will give the pooch a  mohawk.
"And I'll have a mohawk too and we'll be walking around (Seth struts across the living room in his best seven-year-old approximation of a cool guy, elbows swinging and chin held high) going 'Yeah, we got mohawks! Yeah, how do you like that?'"
Just thought I'd share that.

A Boy in Mourning

A word of caution: Skip this post if you're feeling sad. 

My mom died back in early July and since then, Jesse's been very vocal and verbal about his grief. He talks about his Nana almost daily, and cherishes a blue, shell-shaped bowl she made and a framed photo of her. 

His twin brother, Seth, has said little about Nana's death—but that seemed natural to us since Jesse is the family motor mouth and Seth usually deals with his feelings by crying about seemingly-unrelated issues or drawing.

But today, Seth fell off the stoic bandwagon. In the playground after school, instead of doing his usually galloping romp around with his buddies, he plopped down next to a tree and stared into the sky. 

For many, many minutes. Maybe 20 minutes.

A long time for a seven-year-old. 

When two mom-friends approached Sethie, wondering why he was sitting out playtime, he began weeping. "I miss my Nana," he sobbed. 

(Thank you mom-friends, for hugging my little guy). 

He wept all the way home (I know this second-hand, via our babysitter--so my stomach is currently knotted up with guilt because I'm still in work), asking some unanswerable questions of poor Juana: 

"Is this what life is?" 

And...

"Mommy only has her two sisters now; will Mommy and Daddy die and then we'll only be the three brothers?" 

(I'm crying a bit just thinking about him trying to ponder such an unfathomable topic.)

In our building lobby, James, a neighbor's child, came up and spontaneously hugged Seth and asked him why he was so sad. 

He began crying anew. "It's my Nana, she died and I can't stop thinking about her. My heart hurts." 

Our nice neighbor mom scooped Seth up and brought him to her apartment for a playdate, which seemed the perfect antidote to his attack of grief. 

I can't leave work just yet, but my mind is with my boy, enfolding him in my arms and telling him it will all be just fine. 

But I can't alter the unalterable: Losing those you love is part of life, a lousy, crummy part—and I can't take my little boy's pain away. 

I can only help him walk through the emotional fire. 

Really, Really Hungry

We have a system at our school, where parents can be automatically billed for lunch.

My kids all bring what we local parents refer to as "home lunch."

That means, either mom or dad throws together the PB and J sandwiches, cuts up the fruit and packages the cookies/popcorn/health bars every day.

I keep the automatic system in place in case we lose our minds one morning (always a significant possibility) and shove the kids out the door sans lunch boxes.

Seth has figured out  way to game the system.

When he sees something appealing on the lunch line, say, potato chips or cake, or his very favorite, salad with Chinese dressing (still haven't figured out what that is, but it got the boy to love lettuce), he goes for it. I assumed it was an occasional dip into school cuisine, sort of like the Friday pizza tradition.

But lately, I've been getting billed daily--which I thought was an error.

But no.

Seth, it turns out, has been eating home lunch AND school lunch every day.

"Mom," he explained patiently when I queried him about the double dipping. "You know I get hungry. Really, really hungry."

Henceforth, Your Name Is...

Seth has decided that he no longer wants to be called Seth.

Instead, he'd like us all to refer to him as TJ.

A couple of days ago, Seth (you notice I'm still calling him that) asked my hub how he could go about changing his name.

When he learned he'd have to wait until he was a legal adult, then go to court to request the change, he was not deterred.

Instead, Seth (that name again) asked if we could go to court and make the request for him.

I have no idea why he wants to be called TJ, and when asked, my skinny little guy has no answer.

He simply launches into his astonishingly good robot dance moves, grooving to the beat in his head and rapping.

"Call me TJ, Call me TJ, man."

TJ it is.

Nerf Wars

My kids must be just about the easiest targets for marketing tactics around. When they find something compelling, they REALLY find it compelling.

A few years ago, Kyle, my 10-year-old, was obsessed with the TV ads for Floam--a sticky, icky low-rent version of Play Doh that's apparently made only in colors that are not found in nature.

Every time a Floam mini-informercial came on, he'd run to the phone and dial the 800 number.

But, of course, the poor boy had no credit card with which to pay.

When we finally gave in and ordered some Floam (suckered, no doubt, by the bonus of a free, extra-large container of chartreuse), it was a colossal flop. The stuff stunk so badly of some unidentifiable chemical that Kyle and Jesse ran from the room, crying.

The Floam ended up in the garbage.

Since Floam, we've been through the Bakugan thing, the Star Wars thing, the Pokemon card thing and about a dozen other...um, interests.

Right now? For Seth, it's all about Nerf Guns. He knows every model and price, apparently, and talks with great insight about the differences between them. For those who care, the newest and most coveted Nerf is the Rapid Fire-Raider SC-35, and Seth is excited enough about this one to stop begging for the Nerf Tommy 20. (He's been talking about that one at least three or four times a day--literally--for months. It's a bit hard to take.)

Seth has taken to watching Nerf gun videos on You Tube, making his own Nerf-fascimiles out of toilet paper and paper towel tubes and drawing his own vision of a Nerf-filled future.

There are flowers, apparently, and many, many Nerf guns.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a most peculiar noise: the sound of a soft little Nerf dart hitting a piece of paper.

I peeked into the living room to find Seth, wearing his goggles and shooting at a paper target he'd drawn and taped up on the bookshelf. Luckily, he missed hitting our wedding photo.

His latest idea is a Nerf party, where all the kids (27 of 'em) in his second-grade class will come to our New York (read: small) apartment and attempt to whack each other with Nerf darts. Seth has it all set up in his mind:

"Mom, we can turn the table on its side and some kids can hide behind the table and shoot," he told me as I rushed the boys to school this morning. "Some kids can be in our bunk beds and shoot into the living room. I'll be under Kyle's desk, blasting. We'll have goggles for everyone and bags of extra ammo!"

He hasn't brought up the idea of a Nerf birthday cake yet, but I'm thinking that's next.

Of course, next month, we'll be on to something else.

Where Do Babies Come From?

Question of the day from Jesse: "Did we come out of your bellybutton?"

Now that Seth and Jesse are seven years old and in second grade, I can't dissemble anymore when it comes to the topic of babies and their origins, right?

So, here's how skillfully (not) I handled it.

My reply: "Um, no."

Jesse: "Where, then?"

Seth (whispering to Jesse): "I think it's her privates."

Jesse: "Did we come out of your privates?"

Me: "Um, yes."

Jesse: "Did you have to pull your pants down?"

Me: "Um, yes."

Jesse: "Now I'm going to faint." Falls on floor in a heap.

Conversation over.

I'm off to Barnes and Noble to get the right books. Then my hub can take over.

From the Mouths of Babes

Picked up one of Seth's friends the other day.

"So, does your Mom work?" I asked, trying to make conversation with a seven-year-old boy who appears to only be interested in Nerf Guns and plastic soldiers.

"No, she does Pilates," he replies.

No, Apparently, He Can't Wait Two Minutes

Kyle is hungry.

No, he's starving.

"I'mmm starving," he's moaning. "Need food. Must have it now."

The current object of his focus is a Vita Muffin--a sort of healthyish chocolate muffin top.

He can get a Vita Muffin for himself, but prefers it warmed up in the toaster oven, which in our cramped New York City apartment, is on a shelf too high for him to reach.

"Two minutes," I promise.

He waits at least ten seconds. "Now? Will you make it now?" he asks hopefully.

"No, in a minute and 50 seconds," I reply, feeling my shoulders begin to tense up.

You know how this goes, right?

Every ten to fifteen seconds, Kyle repeats his request for a warm chocolate Vita Muffin, as my shoulders continue to rise toward my ears.

Even my threat of, "Every time you ask about it, your waiting time gets longer!" fails to clamp down on the begging.

As he begs, I scurry around, making the bed, picking up towels from the bathroom floor and giving the sink a quick wipedown. Still, the broken-record that is my ten-year-old continues.

Finally, I snap. "Two minutes! That's all I ask for! Is that too long for you to wait?"

He looks at me wide-eyed. "No, Mom, that's fine," he says, suddenly speaking in a most reasonable tone. "Sheesh, you don't have to get so annoyed."

He glances at his little brother Seth. "Watch out, Mom's really cranky tonight," he said. "I don't know what that's about."

Better Left Misspoken

You know how kids sometimes get phrases wrong? And how cute that is? Here are couple from my seven-year-olds:
*Seth: "Mom, can I have more spaghetti and neatballs?"
*Jesse: "When can we go to Toys Near Us?"
*Jesse: "Is Kyle going to Twai Kon Do (Tai Kwon Do) today?"

Toddler Talk

From time to time, my kids ask for another sibling. With a pack-rat husband (hi honey!) and three boys already inhabiting our too-small New York City apartment already, the likelihood of another child joining the mix is about as great as the chance that Bernie Madoff will be lauded with a parade in Palm Beach.
Lately, they've been asking for a toddler, instead of a baby. I'm not sure why, but perhaps they're thinking that a toddler will be less trouble and more fun.
So, this morning, Seth cuddles up to me and whispers in my ear, "Mommy, I hope you're adopting a toddler soon because it will be so much fun to play with."
For the record, I have no idea where he learned about adoption, or got the idea that we'd be adopting anything other than a fish.
"What's a toddler?" I asked.
"I know," said Kyle, my almost-10-year-old, with great authority. "A three or four year-old."
"No way," said Seth. "Toddlers are three."
"Toddlers are babies, silly," retorted Jesse. Except he used a more objectionable word than "silly."
My hub patiently explained that toddlers are kids who have recently learned to walk and that they need a lot of care and attention.
"He can sleep in our room," Seth said. "You'll have to get a little bed."
"And little pillows and blankets," Jesse said.
"We'll give our toddler all our old clothes," Kyle added.
Before this toddler talk went any further, I felt like I had to put the kibosh on the bigger-family fantasy.
"Umm, yeah, there's not going to be a toddler, guys," I explained. "We just don't have the room. Just not going to happen."
The boys stared at me for a moment, silent. Then Jesse shrugged. "So can we get a pet lizard?" he asked.

Tony Hawk is the Bestest Skateboarder

We went shopping for spring/summer clothes yesterday. Mostly for my big guy, since the littles, Seth and Jesse, have more hand-me-downs than they can handle.
Somehow, Seth, happened upon a line of clothing from Tony Hawk, skateboarder extraordinaire.
Seth has never talked about skateboarding or been on a skateboard.
Yet he was drawn to the skater-boy styles like moth to the proverbial flame.
"Tony Hawk," he whispered in awe. He picked up a black T-shirt awash with red swirls (20 bucks before the 30 percent off) and hugged it to his chest. "I love, love, love this, Mama," Seth crooned.
My skinny little non-skater was beside himself with joy. He grabbed a pair of brown baggy knee-length shorts, pulled a bright crimson T shirt laden with skateboard graphics off the rack and held tightly them both, along with his original choice."Please, please can I?" he begged.
Given the 30 percent off, I plopped them all in the shopping cart. It was, however, a little mystifying, this sudden turn toward clothing consumerism.
Seth happily modeled his cool new duds for us at home this morning, then informed me of his future shopping plans. "Mom, can we go back to the Tony Hawk store today? I want Tony Hawk hats and shoes, and definitely Tony Hawk underwear (marketers, are you listening?)"
"So Seth," I asked. "Who is Tony Hawk?"
"Oh, Mama," he replied dreamily. "He is the bestest skateboarder ever. I love him."

Seth the Songwriter

Seth has fancied himself a mini-rocker for about a year now. He came home from one playdate last spring singing Green Day's "American Idiot" and hasn't stopped singing it since. He wears his "Heavy Metal Rock" T-shirt at least once a week and swaggers around the living room, yelling "I'm a rock star! I'm a rock star!"

He even came up with a stanza that may have some rock-anthem potential, at least for the under ten set: "You can't tell me what to do! I do what's right for living."

He singsongs that at least half a dozen times a day.

So, we gave the wannabe musician his very own little guitar for the holidays. Seth likes to strap it on, sneer like Billy Idol and strum away. He even wrote a song (well, we actually wrote it together). I'm not sure it has any commercial potential, or whether it displays an abnormal interest in gore, but here goes....

Popping Out of the Graveyard

Popping out of the graveyard
Looking for some monsters
Shooting them all up
Watch them blood to death
Kicking them out of the way

Popping out of the graveyard
Watch out, monsters
We'll do karate on you
Then you'll really be hurt

Popping out of the graveyard
(repeat ad nauseum, until Mommy loses her mind)

Bizarre Things Kids Say

Overheard a couple of days ago:
Jesse to Seth: "Wanna go out on a date? You look hot."
Seth to Jesse: "Eww. Gross."
Both collapse on floor, laughing.

Meet our High Emotions

Emotions run high in our house much of the time, thanks to our three rather excitable boys: Kyle, Seth and Jesse. Hence the blog name. They're excitable in different ways, which I'll get to later, but all three of them seem to me to be unusually highly emotional. So my husband and I, who I dimly remember being pretty mellow BK (before kids), are pretty excitable ourselves much of the time. Except when I'm using my fake-soothing voice to try to calm everyone down. It's amazingly effective, but I can only sustain the forced sonorous tones of "Let's all relax and discuss this in a family meeting..." for a short period of time. A brief description of the trio:
Kyle, 9 years old and hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware of everything around him (sounds, smells, people), except when he's completely oblivious to what I'm saying. Which he always is when I'm asking him about homework, picking up dirty underwear and finishing his peas. On the flip side, the kid can make Lego creations that are twice his size. And he loves his mama.
Jesse, almost 7. Not a sensitive bone in his body. He'll make a great MBA someday. As our babysitter, Juana, likes to say, "I hope Jesse will be kind to the people who work for him." Clearly, she's got his number. Jess, by far the shortest one in the family--which he complains about endlessly--may not be sensitive, but he can whine with the best of them. And his whine? Think of a gnat buzzing in your ear all night. Yeah, THAT annoying. Still, he's got the gift of keeping us all laughing.
Seth, Jesse's twin, is the sweetest of them in many ways. Artistic, creative, loving...all good stuff. But should he lose a board game or stub a toe, it's weepy time. Profound waterworks. And his response to frustration of any kind, from being unable to complete a puzzle to dropping a baseball, is usually "I'm a big loser; I can't do anything right!" Sigh.
I love 'em, couldn't live without them, can't imagine what the heck they'll be like as grownups. But whew. It's a mighty big job keeping all the feelings under control. And that's what this blog is about. I think