And even milk!

The Little Man is becoming quite the little card. He's getting more articulate, and (likely thanks to the massive amount of TV he imbibes) tries out a lot of things and phrases daily that I have no recollection teaching him. Thank God we haven't started him on the Cheech & Chong or hard-core Sci-Fi yet, so mostly when he tries out new material it cracks my ass up.

A sampling:

• He practiced pratfalls in the living room the other day. Falling on the edge of the couch cushion to the floor, over and over and over. For no apparent reason, and not necessarily even looking up to see audience response.
• He randomly picked this line up out of a train documentary "[Trains haul] gas, oil and even milk!" He spent the rest of the day coming up to me and saying, "Even milk, Mommy! Even milk!"
• I was changing him out of his pajamas and the shirt got stuck half-way over his head. He looked at me with his little face sticking out of the middle of his bunched up yellow shirt and said, "Mommy! A sunflower!"
• This morning right after rising, he started tugging at his full, saggy-wet diper. I asked him, "Are you wet? Do we need to change your pants?" "No, Mommy, I have gas." "You have gas?" I asked him, starting to giggle. "Yes, Mommy, gas, oil, and even milk!"
• We're in the car and I hear this little voice pipe up from the back seat in an adoring tone,"Fuck!" My mind instantly went into overdrive about where he learned this - was it me? Mr. Me? My parents? And, wherever he got it, he hasn't been using that term nearly long enough to be actually fond of it. I looked in the rear-view and finally saw him staring lovingly at his truck. You know, when you're two that "tr" sound can be awfully hard to pronounce.

We've Got Gas

Mr. Me and I have been enjoying a baby-free week due to daycare being closed and oh-so-generous grandparents taking the Little Man for the week. The Week! It's been glorious.

We went out on our first night to ourselves to dinner and a movie - predictable date, but such a treat these days. We got home at 11:00 and my plans included falling into bed literally the minute I got home. But. When we got upstairs for pajamas/bed, we noticed this horrible smell coming from the air conditioning vents. It smelled like farts. Like our house was farting out the vents. It had started to smell the night previous, but I wrote it down to the cat pooping in an inappropriate place that I would locate later. It had gotten stronger overnight, though, to almost uncomfortable levels. I thought to myself that I REALLY needed to make an effort to find that pile of poo, but first thing tomorrow because Dear God I'm exhausted.

Mr. Me, however, had more energy and went down to the basement in search of the source. He came bounding up the stairs "Honey, we have a gas leak. Let's call the fire department!"

Now, I know what gas smells like and this smelled like a whole different type of gas, but I also know that if I didn't put this gas-smell thing to bed he would be bugging me half the night and I would get no sleep. And calling the fire department? Pshaw. So I trekked down to the little room in the basement where the heater & hot water heater live and I smelled something too. It smelled odd, kind of like gas, but if it was gas it wasn't a lot.

Mr. Me took this as confirmation that the house was completely full of gas and started throwing open the windows of my nice, cool house to the muggy 95 degree night air. And he called my dad - our local handyman - who said that if we had a gas leak we needed to get out of the house and call someone.

"Honey, we need to get out of the house NOW and call 911". Apparently talking with my father had shot him right into "our house is going to blow up any second" orbit. Sigh. Our house is full of running electronics - if it had a blowing-up amount of gas in it, it would have blown up already. And, you'd be smelling natural gas throughout the whole house, which I wasn't necessarily convinced we had any gas even in the utility room. I tried arguing, but to no avail. I at least talked him into calling the gas company instead of 911, but he nagged me to hurry and leave the entire time I was going to the bathroom and changing fom my pajamas.

Sitting on the stairs in front of the house was not good enough for my protector, so I ended up sitting on the curb in the dead of a swamp-hot night with pebbles digging into my ass getting madder by the minute. All the while my worry-wart husband paced back and forth, back and forth across the drive, insisting that he's made the right decision.

Finally, FINALLY, the gas guy arrives. And informs us that we have sewer gas coming up through the drain in the basement. And that it can be fixed with a few gallons of bleach water.

This will provide me with YEARS of material for snark-laden commentary. YEARS, I tell you.

Swimmin'

The Little Man and I ventured out to our local city pool for the first time this week. We live in a little suburban town adjacent to The City, one of the many towns clustered around and clinging to its coattails. Frankly, I live within 10 minutes of the pools in 3 different cities, but we chose the one of the town where we actually live because

1. It was cheaper - they give you a discount for being a resident, and
2. Sometimes the other city pools check ID and actually won't let you enter if your driver's license doesn't say you're from that town.

I wasn't sure what to expect at the pool - would the Little Man have a huge cow and run screaming from the building after I paid the fee? Is there just one big swimmin' hole there, or would there be a wading pool for the little guys? If there is a wading pool, will the water be visibly green from all the pee, or will it at least appear to circulate enough to dip a toe in?

Turns out we had a lovely time. The pool had a wonderful kiddy pool, completely separate from the main pool. It had all sorts of cool squirty things and fountains, and was complete with a big water slide for the under 4-ft set! (Oh, and proper circulation - the water appeared to be lovely and fresh, even though with that many little guys in it it was most assuredly not). The Little Man loved it! He shivered for the entire 2.5 hours that we were there, but he had a grand old time squirting the squirters, splashing all over the place, and oh the slide, the SLIDE! He couldn't get enough of the slide, even though he kept getting in trouble for going down on his belly (he discovered early on that you go faster that way). He actually begged to go down the really big story-tall covered curly slide in the big-kid pool, but the lifeguards and mommy have rules about that sort of thing.

The only alarming thing about the pool was actually the other swimmers. The copious ink covering the flesh of too many mommies and daddies. The number of 2-and-3-year-old boys wearing actual BLING with their swimsuits. And there were some missing teeth, on people older than 7. Maybe I should have gone to some other city's pool because my neighbors run a little towards the W-T.

Bonus points of the pool - swimming makes little boys really hungry, so he ate a great dinner. And, swimming makes little boys really tired, so the Little Man crashed on the couch right after we put his jammies on. Methinks we're going to be frequent fliers at the pool this summer.