Buy Nothing New? Ha!
So much for “buy nothing new” month. I have been much more mindful of my purchases, but there were a few things that I couldn’t push off. Namely, clothes for Erik.
He was supposed to be getting dressed yesterday morning, but instead he was crying that none of his clothes fit. I went up to try to get him to stop being so ridiculous and just put his danged clothes on, but he was right. We worked together to try to get a pair of pants on him, but even shaking him in like a little toddler didn’t work. He was like the Hulk, busting out of those bad boys. How did my itty-bitty-widdle baby get so big?
We ended up pulling a pair of dirty sweats out of the laundry. I’m just glad we had those! In the past I’ve bought 10 pairs of the exact same brand of pants, so they are all outgrown at the same time. The only reason I didn’t do that this season was because it was almost impossible to find size 7s in the store. Now I’ve learned a lesson: buy different brands so you don’t have a Hulkesque emergency three minutes before the bus is due to arrive (even if you do send a kid in dirty cloths. Niiiiiice).
I also had to buy new socks for both the kids. I just found out he hates ankle socks. I only buy ankle socks. Whoops.
I’m going to buy a new recliner this weekend. My poor chair bit the dust months ago, but we are a slow people and just deal with a chair that has an arm at a right angle to the seat. Makes it easier for the whole family to jump on in! Now the chair smells like paint or something with a distinct chemical odor. I don’t know what, but I can’t sit in it. That sucker is getting dumped and I am getting a new chair. SO THERE! Except. . . ugh. Hopefully we can find a chair in stock and not have to wait six weeks for an order to come through.
Now for the funny stuff.
My son, my son.
We had “the talk” a few months ago but that was just the beginning of the conversation. Truly, we’ve been having conversations about biology for years and years. The Talk was just the moment of announcing that the penis went into the vagina. He doesn’t want to talk about that, but he does want to talk about how babies come out.
I wouldn’t wrestle with him tonight because I was having cramps, so I was trying to explain my “tummy ache” to him. I didn’t mention my period, but he remembers and asked if I was having my “bloody time”. He is absolutely disgusted that girls have to have a period every single month. “Mom, I just don’t get it. Why doesn’t your brain just tell itself it doesn’t want a baby and make the blood and egg and everything stop?”
Don’t we all wish it was that simple?
Apparently he’s been talking about gender differences with a girl at his table. She says girls are best because they can have babies and babies are sooooooo cute. He has explained to her that child birth hurts really badly and that she is going to have blood every month and being a girl is horrible. (I did not tell him being a girl is horrible, that’s his own conclusion). “Mom, she just won’t listen to me. She’s going to have a baby and be screaming when it comes out because it is going to hurt worse than hard poop and she’ll think ‘Hey, Erik was right. I should have listened to him!'” You probably had to be there, but I couldn’t quit laughing.
He also hypothesized that if he tried to have a baby come out of his penis it would “break [his] nuts.”
I hope we have started these lessons young enough that he internalizes them and preventing unwanted pregnancies* is completely natural and normal. Please, please, please. He is so loving and touchy-feely that I worry about his teen self.
*And STDs of course, but we have not had a conversation about those yet.