July 15, 2007

Explicit Knowledge

My son: “Daddy, sometimes does your penis get stiff and tall and then go back down?”

Bill: “Um, yes. Yes, sometimes my penis does that.”

My son: “Did you know I can make mine do that on purpose?”

Bill: “Really?”

My son: “Yep. It’s easy. You just hump a pillow. [Brother's name deleted] told me that. You should try it.”

Bill: “Thanks for the info.”

My son: “Goodnight!”

This exchange shouldn’t have shocked me. I’ve long known that I am the lone female surrounded by guys, and I’ve shared that fact with you.

You’ve seen the battles against cooties, the boys’ success in turning a social faux pas into a delightful game, the heinous tricks they play on an unsuspecting mother at night, the science experiments they dream up.

But still, this was on a different level altogether.

My Tiny Kingdom: jam-packed with helpful information.

July 11, 2007

Finn Chases A Dream

Finn is almost as obsessed with triathlons as Bill is. He’s done several kids’ triathlons, and he’s participated in adult-distance races as part of a relay team. One of my friends’ daughters, Allie, does the swim, Finn bikes, and another boy handles the run.

Allie is a wildcat. She has big blue eyes and knows no fear. She got her braces off a couple of months ago.

Allie swims all year. Watching her in the water is surreal– when she climbs out you expect her to have a mermaid tail or at least webbed feet, but she doesn’t sport anything unusual except her name written in cursive on the butt of her swimsuit. She doesn’t even train for the biking and running segments of the races, but she’s such a fantastic athlete that she routinely places first in her age group and well ahead of most of the girls and boys anywhere near her age, including Finn.

He doesn’t seem to mind. When he finished a minute behind her at a race last weekend, a man asked him if she had started ahead of him.

“Yes sir, Allie starts ahead of me and stays ahead of me,” Finn said. “I look at that name on the back of her suit the whole race.”

There’s a popular race coming up next month that we’ve done the past several years. We go up with other racing families and one of my favorite parts of the weekend is that we stay in one of the teensy floating houseboats tethered to a dock near the race site. We call them “boatels” and I’m worried that this will be the last year our whole family can stay in just one, as we really had to cram the boys’ limbs into their allotted spaces last year to make sleeping space for everyone. It’s thrilling to sleep on the water, feeling the waves gently lift and drop, even if your brother’s toes are in your face.

While the twins and I are looking forward to the boatel, Bill and Finn are concentrating on the race. In fact, they’ve been focusing on it more than usual ever since Allie announced that she was going to do the entire triathlon by herself this year. That’s a 600 yard swim, 16 mile bike and a 3 mile run to finish it off.

The gauntlet was laid, and Finn held a press conference at dinner last week to throw his hat in the ring as well. Bill promptly abandoned his plan to run and signed up as Finn’s coach, drawing up a punishing schedule of swimming, biking, running, and weightlifting to get Finn ready for the event.

Much to my surprise, Finn’s been religious about following the schedule. At night I hear him panting in his room, followed by the THUDS of his new barbells falling to the floor after a particularly grueling set of reps. If I wander by at precisely the right moment, I might catch a glimpse of him admiring his biceps in the mirror.

He’s growing up.

Which raises the issue of his true motivation for the race. I can see he’s chasing a dream. I just don’t know whether it’s a goal or a girl.

July 9, 2007

A Mother’s Dilemma

Porter generally has little desire for privacy, so I was shocked to see a sign on his door this morning.

I wanted to respect his boundaries. After all, there are times when I want people to KEEP OUT and I say, “I am going to lie down for fifteen minutes. DO NOT DISTURB ME.”

It was the DANGER! that had me concerned. Last time I heard that word being bandied about the house, the boys were tossing hot charcoal in the air and spraying it with insect repellent to watch it explode into flame before it hit the ground.

I opened the door.

Seems that the only danger was to my mental health.

July 8, 2007

Where’d This Cooking Blog Come From?

When I was writing about the twins looking up cuss words in the dictionary I mentioned that I was making Chipotle Chicken on Corn Cakes for dinner and everyone freaked out.  I had NO IDEA everyone would salivate at the mention of our dinner and then send emails pleading for the recipe.

It’s ironic that I saw the recipe at all, as it came from the May issue of Real Simple.  I detest that magazine, because I think I think it’s mis-named.  There’s no way an outdoor party is going to be “real simple,” for example, unless it’s at someone else’s house and I am a guest.
Anyway, I was at the doctor’s office and there was nothing else to read, not even a Car and Driver, and so I thumbed through this magazine and stole the luscious recipe I’m about to share.  It’s easy, light and unique.  Without further ado, I present:

Smoky Chicken Corn Cakes

The recipe speaks for itself, but you could throw in a can of drained diced tomatoes during the winter instead of using Romas.   The chipotles (in a Vienna Sausage-shaped can near the taco kits at the grocery) can be hot, so I just add a little of the sauce, not the pepper itself.  And I’m trying to fatten up some boys, so we use regular ricotta.  You could make the chicken mixture one day and refrigerate it, then let it come to room temperature while you whip up the corn cakes.

Whatever you do, if you have boys, put the dollop of sour cream on the side, not on the top.  Otherwise it will resemble a breast (only in the sense that the meal is round and has a dot in the center, but close enough) and the level of your dinner conversation will rapidly decline.

Happy eating.

July 2, 2007

Get Off Your Donkey

I chugged a celebratory gin and tonic when it was clear that all three of my boys were able to read by themselves.   No more fumbling for a reasonable explanation as to why “cough” doesn’t rhyme with “enough.”  On crotchety days I could screech, “Get out of here and go read a book!”  Best of all, I suddenly had more time to catch up on current events in my New Yorker and US Weekly.

What parent can resist seeing his child engrossed in a book?  Not me, and I know you can’t either.  Try to tear your eyes away.

Reading during dinner at a restaurant, the hell with the macaroni.

You can read Captain Underpants anywhere.

I didn’t know boys were biologically capable of reading during a basketball game, but hey, whatever.

Encyclopedia Brown is still capable of enthralling the small fry.

Look at these intelligent, calm boys who were obviously raised by a devoted, intellectual mother.

(Okay, they only sat side-by-side reading quietly for a split second, but I caught it on camera which at least makes me a devoted, intellectual photographer of bullshit.)
Given the avid reading in the Glamore house, I wasn’t a bit surprised when I peeked in on the twins the other day and saw them hunched over the dictionary, reading it together.  I smiled, envisioning their SAT vocabulary points rising by the minute, and went to take a shower.

It was when I emerged from the shower and overheard their conversation that I realized that they were not being enriched in the exact way I had hoped.

“When people say that they don’t mean ’sit on your donkey” or ’sit on your stupid or silly person.’  They want you to sit on your fanny,” Drew said.

“But it doesn’t say ‘fanny’ or ‘bottom’ or ‘b-u-t-t’ in here,” said Porter.

“That’s how you know it’s a cuss,” Drew said authoritatively.  “Let’s look up ’s-h-i-t.’”

I heard pages turning and bodies jockeying for position.

“I don’t see it,” Porter said.  “Maybe we aren’t spelling it right.”

“We’re spelling it the right way, stupidhead,” Drew said impatiently.  “It rhymes with ’sit’ and that’s ’s-i-t’ but it has ’s-h’ instead of just ’s.’  It’s not in here because it’s a bad cuss.”

“I heard Mom say it that time when she dropped her glass of wine and it broke.”

“Now I’m looking up the one that rhymes with ‘witch,’” Drew said.  He masquerades as my most well-behaved boy, but I was getting a glimpse of his dark side.

“It’s not here!  This dictionary doesn’t have any good words in it.”

“It has ‘Lyme disease,’” Porter pointed out.  “I had a tick on my neck and Mom took it off before it sucked out all my blood and gave me Lyme disease.”

“That’s gross,” Drew said.

Talk of ticks and Lyme disease evolved into a discussion of whether boys’ nipples are properly called “nipples” or Porter’s preferred term, “breasties.”  At that point I quit eavesdropping and went to the kitchen to start the Chipotle Chicken on Corn Cakes.

Damn, I sure as hell am glad my boys use the Scholastic Children’s Dictionary instead of Wikipedia.