Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (22 page)

Story time is another time that can be so precious, sweet and thoroughly exhausting. Now, I
love
books. I love to read, and I want my kids to love it as well, but something about reading out loud to my children makes me yawn like somebody slipped a roofie into my Mommy Juice. I can be wide awake and as soon as I start to read, I’ll have to stop every minute or two to yawn.

Because I get so sleepy when I’m reading out loud I like to keep bedtime books short and sweet. I’m a
Good-Night Moon
kind of girl, “Good-night stars. Good-night air. Good night noises everywhere.”
The end
.

But as I said, my children like to prolong the bedtime routine as long as possible and usually bring me a book which is the equivalent of reading the King James Version of the Bible or
The Canterbury Tales
… in the original Middle English.

On this particular night Aubrey chose
Froggy Goes Out to Eat
. I thought I would be sneaky and leave out some of the zany and fun sound effects that are conveniently written into the story. I was tired and just not in the mood to read aloud words that sounded like they came right out of a Marvel Comic. “ZING. ZANG. ZUP. ZWIP. BANG. SMACK. CRACK.”

I left out the sound effects and read on, for about fifteen seconds before Aubrey completely and totally busted me.

“MOMMA!” she protested. “You skipped these words… BANG. SMACK. CRACK! Do it again and do it RIGHT!”

I sighed and started over. As I read I was continually distracted by my youngest, Sadie, crying from the next room. I paused once to yell some suggestions into the living room to my husband to try to help him ease her to sleep while continuing to read to the big girls. We neared the end of the book and Sadie was still crying. Emma cupped her tiny little fingers around her mouth and yelled into the living room, “DADDY! GIVE HUR SOME MILKS IN HUR BOTTLE! AND PUT HUR IN DA BED, HUR IS SWEEPY! 'KAY?”

Aubrey and I collapsed on the bed laughing at the three-year-old yelling at her Daddy how to take care of her baby sister. Emma glared at us, “’Top lappin’ guys. It not punny!”

“DADDY, DON’T PORGET HUR SASSY AND HUR BWANKY! 'KAY?” She turned to me, her mission now accomplished and said, “You can pinish weading now, Momma.”

After reading a bedtime story or oftentimes instead of reading, we will turn out the lights and play a game the girls call, “Wet’s caulk about our dweams.” (This has nothing to do with sheetrock but is a game I developed to keep Aubrey from talking about nightmares and scary stuff she
doesn’t
want to dream about right before bedtime, usually prolonging bedtime even further.)

Emma loves to be in charge of this exercise and will start by asking, “What you gonna dweam about tonight, Momma?” I try to make up something as silly as possible to get a good laugh out of them (hard to believe, I’m sure.) Then Emma will continue to make her rounds by asking, “Sissy, wha’ you gonna dweam about?”

Aubrey’s answers usually have to do with mermaids and/or junk food. That's just who she is. Emma's dreams usually involve going to the beach with Shuggie, or hanging out with “The Farm People,” which is how my children collectively and lovingly refer to all of my in-laws.

After a story, talking about our dreams and finally,
finally
getting tucked into the bed, it’s time to say our prayers. Saying our prayers must be the very last thing we do every night. My children apparently have a lot to be thankful for and are careful not to forget a single thing as they pray.

By this point in the evening, not only am I ready for a shower and sleep, but I am ready to spend some time with my husband and Sadie before they both go to sleep, as well.

The girls are very strict about my hands being folded a certain way and my eyes being closed before they begin, but apparently these rules only apply to me, because they will stop in a heartbeat, right in the middle of a sweet and sincere conversation with Jesus to yell, “CWOSE you eyes, Momma!”

Once we are all following their rules Emma will begin, “Deah World, Fank you for my fam-i-wee, fank you for my sis-tohs, fank you for my best fwiend ever in da whole world, Poppa. Fank you Mary had a wittle wamb.”

On this particular night, I thought I could wrap this up if we were praying for Mary’s lamb, I said, “AMEN!”

Emma’s eyes popped open and she pointed her tiny little finger in my face. “No, I not done yep. Cwose you eyes, Momma.” She folded her hands again as she continued, “Fank you for the farm, fank you for my cousins, fank you for Shuggie and waffles...”

She paused to take a breath and I took the opportunity to blurt out another, “Amen.” She pointed her finger in my face again and scowled at me. “NO I NOT DONE YEP! Do dis Momma,” she said as she showed me once again how to fold my hands. “Fank you for da Lord, thank you the stars and the trees.”

Wow. That was a new one, thanking God for… God.

“Emma,” I said, risking her finger in my face by interrupting her again, “you know you can talk to God all by yourself when Mommy's not in here, right?”

Her hands spread in amazement and her mouth and eyes were wide open, “OH MY GASH!”

“You keep talking baby, and He’ll keep listening. Mommy has to go to bed!”

Thankfully, for
all
of us, God doesn’t need eight hours of sleep and two cups of Starbuck’s Café Verona before He can keep up with you all day tomorrow.

A
nd girls have a coo-coo. That’s what the girls at my house have, anyway. I realize there has been all manner of research done about teaching your children the correct names for their, ahem,
parts
— and how by saying penis and vagina to your children, somehow they will be closer to you and realize how open and accepting you are of their sexuality. Hell, I even saw one mother on
Oprah
say the word ‘clitoris’ to her ten-year-old. But Lord help me, I
cannot
say vagina to my daughters.

I tried, I really did. I had a professor in college who had me convinced if I would only say ‘vagina’ all my worries about my daughters being sexually promiscuous or turning into a Lifetime movie would magically disappear.

This seemed like a great theory until I actually had to say the word “vagina” to my own child. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation came up, but, I do remember feeling like a complete and total pervert. It didn’t help matters that as soon as the word was out of my mouth she began
chanting
, “bagina-bagina-bagina-bagina-bagina.”

“Oops,” I thought. “I have made a big mistake; quite possibly a huge mistake. She is going to go to preschool tomorrow and tell everyone she sees that she has a vagina.”

Maybe you live in a liberal big city where the teacher would smile and nod approvingly at your openness as a mother. But I don’t. I live in the Deep South, where even women in their thirties with three kids pray their parents think they are still virgins. I had to fix this. Now.

I started scrambling to cover my tracks. I started thinking of every acceptable nickname I could for the old “va-jay-jay,” just to try to distract her from her new favorite word.

“Va-jay-jay, Aubrey, you can call it a va-jay-jay. Or pee-pee!” I frantically tried to find a substitute.

“Bagina-bagina-BAGINA,” she chanted.

“Or, or a cookie! You can call it a cookie!”

“NO! Momma! You not eat it!” She squealed and giggled. This was not a point I was willing to argue.

“Coo-coo, Aubrey it’s called your coo-coo!” And thus the coo-coo was born at our house.

The penis conversation came along only a few short weeks later, when Aubrey saw her daddy peeing in the bathroom.

“You an ele-pant, Daddy?” she asked.

“Momma, that Daddy’s coo-coo?” I cringed all the way down to my Momma's Southern Baptist roots as I said, “No baby. (Sigh.) That is his penis.”

“Oh, he have a long coo-coo, Momma?”

“Yes, baby,” I answered her, already trying to think of a way to change the subject. It wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t very excited about the word ‘penis.’ Smart girl… or so it seemed for a couple of years.

By the time Aubrey was four-years-old she had a new found interest in all things genitalia. Every bath time was peppered with questions about her own body and anyone else she could think to ask about. I used the opportunity to remind her that her body was
hers
, it was private and she shouldn’t show it to anyone else, and if anyone tried to look at her coo-coo or touch it she should always tell me.

My husband tried to avoid being naked in front of the girls at all costs to hopefully decrease some of their ever-growing interest, but from time to time we found ourselves discussing penises with our preschool daughters.

On Aubrey’s last day of preschool, we were all dressed and ready for school so I let the girls watch SpongeBob until time to go. As I was checking my email I overheard Aubrey say, “I hope HE doesn’t have a penis.”

I heard brakes squealing. Lord,
have
mercy.

“Aubrey, come here!”

Aubrey walked towards me with a little sideways grin, “What?”

“What did you just say?”

We were about to leave for her very last day of preschool, ever, and I didn’t want to remember this day as “the day Aubrey told her classmates about SpongeBob’s penis.”

Aubrey began giggling uncontrollably, “Hee-hee, penis.”

“Do you know what that is?”

She actually snorted she was laughing so hard, “Yep, it's a boy's coo-coo.”

Sigh.

“That's right, but it's private (Hello World!) and we don't talk about it at school.”

Aubrey was still snickering as she walked back into the living room, “'Kay, Momma.”

We made it through the last day of school and I thought we were safe. I mean, I have three
girls
, surely we could let the penis conversation rest for a bit.

A few weeks later one of my best friends, Sara, needed some help watching her four-year-old son while she and her hubby snuck off for their anniversary. I was glad to help, because she is one of my favorite people in the universe. The girl has more energy than anyone I’ve ever met and every time she comes to my house, it is always clean when she leaves, and all my kids have been bathed. I don’t actually understand how she does it but I love her so much, I’d do just about anything for her.

Her son, Tristan, is every bit as sweet as his momma and both Aubrey and Emma claim him as their best friend. His parents are raising him to be a true gentleman by making him open doors for my little girls, assist them in pulling their bicycles out of ditches and making him stay out of their way when they are changing clothes or using the restroom. The kids are really quite funny about it, slamming doors in each other’s faces and yelling, “Excuse me, I
meed
some pwivacy!”

But because Aubrey had been so inquisitive about all things genitalia lately, my Mommy Radar was on high alert for any hanky-panky of the preschool persuasion. It rained non-stop on one of the days Tristan spent with us, which lead to lots of fort building and movie watching.

It was late in the afternoon; Aubrey, Emma and Tristan were lined up on a pallet in the floor, snuggled up together watching a movie. I was in the kitchen starting dinner when I heard some mischievous giggles coming from the living room. I immediately expected the worst and tried to sneak around the corner to spy on them and catch them in the act of “I’ll Show You Mine, You Show Me Yours,” but to no avail. Every time I popped my head around a corner, Aubrey and Tristan would be staring at the TV trying to look innocent, while Emma snoozed beside them, oblivious.

We continued this cat and mouse game for about fifteen minutes, at which point Emma had fallen asleep. I picked her up and put her in between Aubrey and Tristan to separate them; if I couldn’t catch them in the act, it was the best I could do.

Several days after Tristan’s parents returned from their trip, Aubrey walked into my bathroom while I was taking a bath, and began yet
another
drawn out conversation on her favorite topic.

“Mommy, why your coo-coo not look like mines?”

“Because I’m a grownup, Aubrey. Kids and grownups don’t look the same.”