Hay is for Horses

Lately we've been alternately appalled and amused by various utterances; however, it seems that the truly funniest stories come from other people.

The Goose's teacher informed Brian of this incident yesterday:

Groggy and irritable from his too-short nap at school, The Goose was dragging his sheet and blanky back to his cubby when he stepped on another 3s mat (side note: in our house, we refer to school friends as "The threes" ... there are also some Twos and Fours, but they are often prohibited from various things during imaginary play -- as in, "Only 3s and 4s can play with my chainsaw. No Twos can play with it."). In response to the Mat Trespass, the Offended Three said, "HEY!"

To which our darling replied--you guessed it, "Hay is for horses."

Then the stinker walked over to the teacher and said, "Hey, Miss Callee Ann, do you see that over there? That word is F-R-I-E-N-D and it spells lawnmower."

And all of this was followed by a weekend of visiting with my dear college friend Jane, who drove up from Jackson to play in the yard, shop, and, apparently, be called names. During dinner one night, while Brian and I were having our own heated conversation (about the status of our teflon pots -- he claims that I scratch them with forks; I insist that this is hogwash intended to tarnish my status as Queen of the Kitchen. Incidentally, he also charges that they're carcinogenic, but I haven't investigated that yet.), John was having a conversation with Jane, completely unbeknownst to his enthusiastically argumentative parents.

After calmly waiting for our discussion to subside, Jane turned to me and said, "Your son just called me a lug wrench," politely wiped her mouth, and kept eating low-fat, delicious Cappellini Pomodoro and home-made (by Brian) whole-grain bread.

But of course we do hear some doozies ourself. Like tonight, over pizza, he looks at me and says, "Mom, be careful with that piece. It has vegetables on it."

Or how about while The Master was having his bath tonight ... made a huge mess ... then said, "Don't worry Mom, it's OK, you can clean it up now."

Could you ever believe that he could throw Get-Under-the-Futon Tantrums?

Ah, the threes.

And then there are the obsessions. Like the current one about porcupine fish. He got a subscription to Nat'l Geographic for Kids and the most recent edition has an "article" about "Scaredy Cats" (animals that get scared and do something weird -- when I was a kid we referred to this as "it's like when a lizard shows you his money"). The first creature shown in the spread is a porcupine fish which--as John could tell you--swallows water when it's scared and blows up like this:

When he first saw the pictures of the of the PF, he was quite concerned that "the big scary monster" was going to "eat the turtle." Really it was just two pictures of the same creature: The monster was the Scared PF and the "turtle" was the calm PF, or PFV as I like to call him (Porcupine Fish on Valium).

Here he is with his mag, which he "reads" each night religiously:

Here is his imitation of the fish swallowing water:

I fear this is a bit boring.

Because really, I must admit that tonight I am forcing myself to type this despite the fact that I still have 91 pages to go in order to finish my book club book for this month (Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert -- fabulous, btw).

But I do have to leave you with some pretty sweet post-bath shots that B took the other night:

I swear that thing in my hair is really cute when it's on right.

Every night after his bath he says, "Hode me Mama. I'm code."

And, of course, if I'm tode, I'm sode.

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