Trout is anal. Not blatantly so, but enough that it's noticeable. At least to me. Things with Trout have to be just so. Like today, today there were some good examples of his analness. We'd gone for breakfast at Panera. Me, Trout, MommyFriend#1 and MommyFriend#2. MF#2 has a buttload of kids under age 7. I feel sorry for her. So we're friends.

Anyway, after breakfast me & MF#1 are outside Panera's waiting for MF#2 and her buttload of kids, minus one that we were watching. Trout wanted to go back in and "help" MF#2. I said no. Trout gets no. So he ran off down the sidewalk as fast as his little legs would carry him, as far away as possible from me. The Nosayer.

Luckily for me I live in a town of old people (what? this is your first visit to my blog? you did not know this???). And an old people was coming up the sidewalk. The old people took pity on me and gently, baritonely, scolded Trout. Trout turned around promptly and while running, as fast as his little legs would carry him, back to me, he turned around and waved his little finger at the old people and lectured him loudly on telling him what to do. Only mommies can tell Trout what to do. Not that Trout talk, talks but he jabbers up a storm as good as an ewok. The old people almost peed himself laughing... maybe he did pee himself. For all I know he had on some depends.

Then the old people had the nerve to go into Panera's. Trout knew the rule was: No going into Panera's. He loudly lectured the old people some more on breaking the rule. Loudly & thoroughly until the door finally shut. Waving that little finger the whole time. If that old people wasn't wearing depends yet, I bet he went to the store after Panera's to go stock up. In case he met up with Trout again someday.

You're scaring the old people.

I live in a retirement town. We have 53 golf courses in the 3 small towns that make up our rural suburb. Old people driving while I'm trying to take/pick up my kids from school are the bane of my existence. So, today, I'm at the Dr.'s office w/the little three: Squareboy 10, Daughter, 6 and Trout 11 months. We get shuffled around to 3 different rooms in an hour. By the end of the hour the little three are restless. Wild animal restless.

Squareboy is laying on his tummy, playing gameboy, sliding around the room on the Dr.'s stool. Daughter is standing on the examining table pretending she's a model on the runway. Oh. And she's wearing size 0-3 month shorts. Trout is pushing the, empty, surgical instrument table-on-wheels around the room going "Brmmmm-brmmmm" and occasionally banging it into the, metal, examining table Daughter is prancing around on.

I tried to stop Trout, from the banging, and got loud, high-pitched squeals of disagreement. They used to call his dad Piccolo Pete at this age. I stopped trying to dissuade him and tried playing with him. At this point the nurse came in & quietly started lecturing Daughter... who immediately sat down to listen intently. A change of scenery is always interesting.

"Sweetie," says the nurse, "you are scaring the old people." I'm sitting there wondering how the heck Daughter is scaring old people in another room by pretending to be a model on a catwalk in size 0-3 month shorts. I'm way confused. And then the light dawns, it's not Daughter who's scaring the old people. It's Piccolo Pete II.

The nurse doesn't believe me when I explain, after all, Trout is pretty darn angelic looking. So Squareboy, ever helpful, jumps up, teases the baby, torturing him into demonstrating the squeal and then sits back expecting to be rewarded. I'm surprised the nurse didn't verbalize her "WTF!??!" expression.

Who? Me?

Saturday night was a lazy night. The Dad was playing Warhammer in an all-day tournament that was turning into an all-night tournament. Sigh. But he was doing well and that is kinda cool. Me and the kids were being lazy and relaxing, it had been a busy enough week and Eldest was still recovering from his knee surgery. Trout and I had taken a bath and, seeing as the Dad wasn't home and wouldn't be home for a while, I was walking around with wet, uncombed, einsteinish hair.

I was just gathering the ingredients for brownies, because Eldest had the "munchies' due to his drugs (from the surgery people, sheesh) when the local sheriff popped his head in my back door. Now I know who the guy is, but it's not like we are best buddies or anything. It's definitely not normal for him to pop over and say hi.

"Everyone okay?" He asked. Um, yeah, duh. "We got a 911 hang-up call from this address."

Crap. That would be my fault. I gave Trout the phone, he loves to push the buttons, listen to them beep and watch the phone light up. Apparently he managed to hit the magic combination of 9+1+1+send. Color me embarrassed. Even more so when I had a chance to catch a glimpse of me in the mirror with my wet, einsteinish hair. I scolded Trout but he just looked at me with his big baby blues,

"Who? Me?"

Jackie Channing it

Having boys means getting to know the inside of an emergency room. Really, really well. I have seen the insides of emergency rooms in 5 states now. I've only lived in three. Boys just gravitate towards the stupid (Ow! My balls!). Every time I get mad about the army taking the Dad from me for so many hours every day, every week, every month I think about the emergency room and how high our bill would be without our medical benefits. The army may pay the Dad squat. The army may take the Dad away too much. But the army pays the bill, over and over and over, every time one of the boys (and thrice Daughter) breaks something.

Take Eldest, for example, we are just wrapping up physical therapy for his stellar double bone break this summer (A Tiny Tumble) and he decides to Jackie Chan it and tweak his knee. I'm not positive of all that Jackie Channing it entails, but there's walls and flips and running and stupid stuff involved. It's possible that Jackie Channing it didn't do the damage, or only some of the damage because there was skateboarding and running and jumping and stuff too. The reason I'm not sure what the heck caused the damage would be because I ignore stuff that allows the boys to keep on moving. And Eldest was still hobbling around and moving. No worries on my part.

However, even I have my limits. And when 2, or 4, or 6 weeks later he was still kind of hobbling, and occasionally complaining, I scheduled a Dr.'s visit. And she scheduled an MRI. And the MRI showed a meniscal tear. Off to the orthopedist we went. And, then, yesterday, off to surgery we went.

Luckily, surgery went great. Eldest was first on the schedule, which was a good thing because while he played it cool he was a little stressed on it & his stomach was acting up. It's too bad I forgot my camera because he wore a lovely gown with a beautiful, poofy, cap. After the IV (how anyone can miss with veins like that is beyond me, but they stuck him twice) they shaved his leg and then painted it orange... yeah, he looked wonderful. He said it was too bad they didn't paint it blue, he could've been a smurf. I reminded him that OomaLoompa's are orange. He glared.

Surgery took longer than expected, so I got a little nervous but all was well and he looked great when, finally, I saw him. He had, basically, a double tear which meant a piece of his meniscus was poking up... that was the pain he kept feeling, the pain that had him hobbling and complaining occasionally. They weren't able to repair and therefore removed. Good for now because recovery is quicker, no stitches to heal. Bad as he gets older & has less meniscus. He's happy because now he'll be healed in time for tennis season.

It was pretty funny seeing him hobble to the bathroom with a walker (the nurse padding along besides him, holding his hospital johnny closed so he wouldn't flash his naked butt), he giggled himself and told the nurse he was having "flash-forwards" I assume to when he's old & gray with a walker.

Tongue-Ups

It's widely known that my tongue is so flexible (the only part of me that has fulfilled my wish to be elastigirl) that I can, if I wanted, stick it up my nose. Little kids are frequently entertained either by having me repeatedly demonstrate, or trying it themselves. Even my own kids are fascinated by this talent of mine.

Therefore it came as no surprise today when Squareboy asked me to show off my trick. We were once again in the car, ferrying between school and home. I complied. He watched with rapt attention. Then tried it himself. Again and again. He got very close and I complimented him on his skill. He beamed with pride and kept trying. Finally he asked why he couldn't do it, if he really was my son and all. I explained I'd really stretched out my tongue, because a tongue is all muscle, as I was getting my top teeth. He sighed in defeat. His top teeth are already in.

Next thing I know he's sitting next to me freakishly moving his tongue up and down, up and down. I asked him what he was doing.

"Tongue-ups." He said seriously, "I'm stretching out my tongue"

Being-Who-Knows-All

Car rides with my bunch are fantabuluous. Morning car rides not so much. Today, however, was a wonderful exception. Both Squareboy and Daughter were in excellent moods and Trout, while, unfortunately, stinky, was happily babbling in his seat. With good moods come questions.

"If it rains hard enough can it cut your skin?" From Daughter, because it's lightly sprinkling out and she worries like that.
"No. Skin is very tough and water doesn't have any sharp edges." From me.
"Actually," Squareboy chipped in, "when water freezes it can have sharp edges." Daughter nodded sagely in the backseat, this she had known all along.
"Skin is a wonderful thing." I tried, attempting to save my status as Being-Who-Knows-All (I'm fast losing this status with Squareboy). "Even when skin breaks it can heal itself. Skin is self-healing." This impressed both of them.
"Skin is like armor." Squareboy stated.
"And it holds in our bones." Daughter added. "It holds in our bones and our meat."

The thought of our skin being like sausage casing quieted both Squareboy and I. Having meat, being meat, is not so much of a pleasant thought. And our morning conversation drifted off to Chawlie. Today is Chawlie's last day. I am so sad. Chawlie, and family, is not a close friend but every school day, every church day, every local event day, night, for the last three years has been shared with Chawlie. Every morning before school Chawlie is thought of and mentioned for Chawlie is allergic to peanut butter. And while Squareboy can have peanut butter, being a big fourth grader and not eating lunch with the little first graders, Daughter can't. I make Daughter's lunch first on peanut butter & jelly days, she gets just jelly, then Squareboys, with peanut butter, so there is no cross contamination from the peanut butter jar to the jelly jar. And every morning Daughter reminds me;

"Chawlie is allergic to peanut butter!" As if I'm not the Being-Who-Knows-All.

I'm going to miss Chawlie.

Poop-on-a-stick

When we lived in the Land of Ice & Snow, for long, dreary, years, we attended the Minnesota State Fair a couple years running. Not that we are big farm people, but because we'd heard of the many, many different foods-on-a-stick. And the fair did have many foods-on-a-stick. My favorite being the deep-fried dill pickle stuffed with cream cheese. Number Two liked the alligator-on-a-stick and my mom was rather fond of the fried green tomatoes-on-a-stick. We never did try the deep fried snickers bar-on-a-stick though.

Today, in the car, Eldest was yelling at Daughter for me. Because, last night, I'd gone to take my contact lenses out and laying next to my contact lens case were my diamond earrings. Welllll, not so much my diamond earrings as just the diamonds. Hence the yelling. Daughter had taken the jewels out of their settings. How she managed this is beyond me since I've had these earrings for forever (in my world more than 20=forever). Me having something forever is practically unheard of, delicate with my stuff I am not. Therefore I thought these earrings were indestructible. Obviously, I had not counted on daughters ingenuity.

During his yelling spree Eldest layed out his case against Daughter, and in that laying out came across; "and you drank toilet water". This is true. Once when she was five, Squareboy dared Daughter to drink out of the toilet and she did. So of course, Daughter now being six, she is mortified that this fact has been revealed in the crowded public of our minivan and she bursts out screaming. My other kids, all boys, thrive on making her scream and now Squareboy chips in that he had diarrhea that day and she drank his floaties. The brings on more screaming and Eldest joins in. Did I mention that I'm eating a soft taco from Taco Bell right at that moment. I rarely eat Taco's but I lost my glasses on last week's plane ride and in between Dr.'s appointments and picking out glasses I had been starving. Anyway...

The conversation continued onto all the different kind of floaties, how poop would taste going down, how the different poopies would feel going down, how poop looked, etc. etc. etc. This progressed to corn poopies. Apparently corn poopies are very common to the nonflushers at Squareboys school. Eldest, remembering our days in the Land of Ice & Snow the best, turned away from teasing Daughter, the fun is soon over with how easily she screams, and turned to Squareboy. Encouraging him to collect tooth picks, spear the floating corn poopies and offer them to fellow classmates as snacks. Squareboy thinks this is hilarious. I am deathly afraid he'll do it. Poop-on-a-stick. Great.