Wednesday, February 20, 2008

"There's a Monster in my Pants" and other games the Mellens play

This is not as naughty as it sounds. Dh makes up hundreds of original games to play with our kids and his nephews. There's even been an 7-year ongoing "Monster Wars" event including such games as: Sleeping Giant (they try to push him off the bed), Hot Sock Meteor, Million Alien Hand Attack, Ticking Bomb Monster, Marshmellow Gunnery, etc...

This particular incident started because Dh has big holes in his sweat pants that he pads around the house in. The pockets on this specific pair are ripped and hanging out so you can see his underwear. At least Bonuts could. She shrieked "I can see your underwear" and tried to reach into her Dad's pockets. Dh warned her "Watch out, there's a monster in my pants," as he reached through the torn pocket on his other hip through to grab her hand. She screamed happy murder and proceeded to make a repetitive game out of it. She, reaching timidly with suspense; He, grabbing little fingers and yelling "There's a monster in my pants!" with his face writhing in pain as if an alien was trying to burst out of his body. Then Babe tried to join in the fun too.

I was like, "Great, that's just the image and accompanying dialogue we want to implant in our children's memories: sticking their hands in their father's pants expecting to be bitten by a monster." I can see the therapist and sex counseling bills adding up in the near and far future.

Since we're already going blue with the recounting of this incident, I've got one more story regarding Bonuts and her tampon obsession. She is fascinated with all things genital - very interested in the differences between boys and girls, etc. She has also watched many of my natural childbirth videos and knows exactly where babies come from, or at least out. She is perplexed about tampons and where they disappear to. I explained to her that ladies have three holes: one for pee, one for babies and tampons and one for poo-poo.

So, Dh is tucking the girls into bed one night last week and finds Bonuts busy with her hands down her pants. He asks her what she is doing and she replies "Playing with my holes." He tells her that is a private thing and suggests she stop and wash her hands and go to sleep. I check in on her 5 minutes later and she is still scratching around down there with a a very strange and concentrated look on her face. I pull the covers back and pull down her pants to check for a rash and find a much abused and worse for wear OB tampon. She tells me "I was trying to find my baby hole in my pee-gina." (She calles her vagina a pee-gina, ie.) boys have a pee-nis and both anatomies are for pee-ing.) A heated debate followed in which I argued that she didn't need tampons yet becuase she wasn't ready to have babies and her arguing with me that she was a big girl already and there were lots of babies inside her right now that would probably be born next month.

My goodness, she's 3 going on 13 going on 30. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come! And now I remember that Ellie used to try and eat tampons she found in my purse. She called them "vagina-candies." :)

Friday, February 8, 2008

Winter SUCKS!

I am sooo sick of winter! I think I might have sunlight deficiency syndrome - where you get depressed when you haven't been in the sun long enough. No, on second thought, I have been outdoors plenty and gotten all the fresh air I need - I just hate being COLD!

And driving in snow with idiotic commuters. I feel like I have three near death experiences a night just driving to work! They actually canceled an evening performance on Wednesday which is unheard of. Good thing they cancelled because it took Dh 3 hours just to snow blow our driveway and there's no way I would have made it out of our driveway, let alone to work on time.

We have had three days of school canceled so far due to snow. Probably a foot of snow has fallen in the last big storm on Wednesday. The problem is that there is an inch of ice underneath it all. The highways are great but the neighborhood roads are dreadfull. Our mail-lady had to be pushed out of an enbankment yesterday losing her bumper and back license plate and the school busses were running over a half hour late. Yesterday, Bonut's school bus got stuck and needed a push from parents at the bus stop six times before it actually broke down and the kids all had to wait before another short bus could be sent.

We went outside to make snowmen earlier in the week, but the snow wouldn't stick. Fellow parents, I've learned a great trick for keeping gloves and snow boots on toddlers - DUCK TAPE. Just wrap it around the edge of the pant leg or coat sleeve - nothing budges. No snow in wrists or ankles. The times I have not done this, I have found Babe bootless and mittenless in the snow,(for I don't know how long)while his sisters were supposed to be watching him. Snot and tear icicles stuck to his face and coat, wailing. Good thing he didn't get frostbite.

We lost major portions of two large trees in our front yard, a tulip tree and a pine tree. The weight of the snow and ice was just too heavy and they snapped right off, narrowly missing powerlines. Dh got very worried after this happened and made me go outside with him and his super-duper long painting poles to try and knock snow off other trees that looked particularly dangerous. The technique consists of standing underneath the tree, sticking your pole up there as high as you can and waving it like mad while heaps of ice and snow fall on your head and you hope you don't get knocked out by a deadly icicle. Fun! Fun! Fun! - NOT!!!

Oh, and the power just went out. How fitting. OK - enough complaining. I'm off to blow my nose, take some decongestant and crawl under my heater blanket.