Oh, Say, Can You See...

...every fricken kid in the neighborhood is at my house?? People, a word of warning: If you put up a swing set in your yard, you are sure to attract children, like bees to honey. The swings went up Saturday. Saturday afternoon, Max was chatting over the fence to neighbors I've never met, inviting them over to "hang out" and play on the swing set. Then, he yelled out to another neighbor, "Come on over!!". By Monday evening, we had children from two different sets of neighbors playing over and Max had met a new friend riding his bike. Guess what? He came over, too. Now, I'm psyched to meet our neighbors. I like that my boys have close proximity to playmates for the summer days when they're bored and sick of my company. I just fear that we'll never be alone again... ever.... I know I am probably getting a little ahead of myself, but you don't know my son. He invites EVERYONE over. Last fall we stopped into a local pizza joint/bar to pick up some pizzas for dinner. While I'm paying, he strolls over to the game of pool that's going on and tells the young guys there that he has a pool table in his basement if they ever wanted to come over and play. They laughed as my face washed over in horror and said, "yeah, but we like to have a few beers while we play". No problem, answers Max, my mom's got the beers!! Again at the local IGA, we're grabbing some marshmallows for a little campfire one night and Max addresses the cute girl running the register: "We're having a fire tonight, wanna come over?" She giggles and invites all the other cashiers over to see how cute he is. Max is all business, he wants to know "what time they get off work". I'm not kidding, my 5-year-old son is working on teenage girls here! I guess I should just relax. The swing set is paid for and it's assembled. The boys have friends to play with and I don't have to lug them over to anyone else's house. I have a pool table in the basement and plenty of beers and if I get desperate, there are some hip young dudes down at Mustang Sally's that I can use Max to wrangle into coming over. For some beers of course.

The Boy Who Spits Everything Out

Wee Beast likes to take things for a taste-test before he commits to fully swallowing and digesting his meals. It drives me crazy. I am constantly harassed for snacks all day by both my boys, only to find half-chewed or sometimes (worse) fully-chewed food in piles around the house. Whether it be a string cheese that he decided wasn't worth the effort of finishing, or the banana, that's flavor wasn't quite what he'd hoped it'd be, I'm getting tired of sickly snack stashes. On our deliciously warm Saturday last weekend, the boys had a picnic lunch on the deck, in between rounds of splashing in the water table. Miles decided that his peanut butter and jelly sandwich wasn't fit for consumption and settled on squishing it to the deck boards with his bare feet in sweet satisfaction. This utterly grossed out our little girl neighbor who immediately rushed over to me to inform me of every yucky thing my little boy was doing. I shrugged, being tied up in a swing set assembly, and told her "who cares", it's just a little squished sandwich, I'll get it later. Well, later turned out to be Monday morning, when Miles rushed into the house whining. He was frantically trying to brush something off his tongue, and looking at me in horror. I noticed a pile of vomit-looking crud on my coffee table. I looked at Miles. I looked at the deck slider door ajar. I wiped his tongue off and offered him his juice. What was that Miles? Yucky stuff, he offered. I was racking my brain as to what the hell he ate, when it occurred to me.... shudder... Did you EAT that smooshed sandwich off the DECK?? Yes, he said calmly, it was yucky. I'll give you all a minute to gag. Apparently, when yucky things are stuck to the deck, you go outside and see how they taste. Sometimes, they taste yucky and you spit them out on the coffee table. I went right outside and literally had to scrape the damn thing off with a plastic shovel to get rid of it. Ick. But, spitting things is not always limited to yucky things, either. Like the string cheese and the banana, perhaps he just gets tired out after exerting the energy to chew. This morning he stuffed a 1/4 of a bagel in his mouth and then neatly proffered it up 20 minutes later in a small scale model of Mt. Greylock on, of course, my coffee table. Now, those of you who know me, know how anal I am about cleanliness. I have no excuse for the jelly sandwich, a.k.a., yucky stuff. It just escaped me with a busy weekend. And before you hesitate to set your coffee on my table, rest assured, I clean it.