The Birds and The Bees...and The Ostrich

This summer the birds and the bees reared their pesky little heads in our household. You know the ones I'm talking about....those birds and those bees. We're still dealing with the fallout from my oh-so-botched initial conversation with JT. It was just a normal summer day. We'd been to the beach earlier that day and I was hot, sandy, sticky and starving. All I wanted to do was cook supper and go take a shower. As I'm cooking, I suddenly I hear JT screech:

“Mooooooooom! MO’s having sex with the dog!”

I stood there for a moment thinking about the ignorant bliss of a few seconds gone by before turning around and sweetly saying, “What did you say, Honey?”

JT continued, “MO’s having sex with the dog! Look, she’s letting the dog lick her face!”

Whew. Okay. “Honey, MO is not having sex with the dog. She cannot have sex with the dog. (At this point MO is returning the dog’s kisses, minus the tongue). Your sister is kissing the dog. Kissing and sex are not the same thing. Please don’t say sex when you mean kissing.”

My turn to screech: "MO! STOP KISSING THE DOG THIS INSTANT!"

I turn back to my cooking, knowing that I will not get away with this. But foolishly hoping nonetheless.

“Well then, Mom, what is sex?”

Crap! And what does this totally unprepared mom say? “Well, JT, sex isn’t kissing.” Now I’m wracking my brain to try to remember exactly what sex is because suddenly I’ve forgotten. There is just a roaring train sound in my head. Nothing else. No synapses firing. Nada. Maybe a few crickets chirping, but that's it.

JT says, in a knowing tone, “Oh, thaaaaaat’s right, I know what sex is. It’s when a man and a woman take off their clothes and, you know, do stuff.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. This cannot be derailed. So, of course, I do the only obvious thing and tell JT that Daddy will talk to him as soon as he gets home. Then I call Hubs and tell him to get himself home asap.

Hubs works late in order to cower and hide from the discussion awaiting him at home. I don't blame him a bit.

I began to search Amazon and Barnes & Noble for the perfect sex-for-kids-who-are-too-young-to-know-about-sex book. I know he’s 9 years old. I learned about sex when I was 9. I was utterly disgusted by it all at the age of nine. I was determined to ‘do this right’ so I began with research. JT does not even weigh 50 pounds yet – he’s close at 48 – but somehow a 48-pounder is simply not ready to know about sex. Yes, I know how ridiculously mommy-headed that sounds. It’s my ostrich logic on this topic. I have no defense for it.

Just wait until you hear about my trip to the bookstore....

Ms. No Depth Perception Strikes Again

How am I supposed to educate my children on a day like this? It started around 4:00 this morning when some random alarm went off. Apparently, it was an alarm clock alarm on a clock that we don’t use for alarms. Go figure. I thought it was the smoke alarm and FREAKED OUT in a big way. I never did fully go back to sleep. I did spend some time in that murky, semi-sleep state dreaming of fire, smoke, death and dying. Later this morning, as I’m dragging myself out of the shower I get a phone call that the dog was late for her grooming appointment. Now that seems insignificant, I’m sure. Around here it takes about a week to get an appointment with the dog groomer and my dog can no longer see because her sweet little eyes are covered by fur. I feel immensely guilty about this since the dog cannot arrange her own grooming appointments; so I throw on clothes and race off, with wet hair and unbrushed teeth, with the dog under my arm for the groomer. As I back the van out of the driveway, while rolling down the window to adjust the side mirror, I hear a nasty crunch. I look out the window to see what toy I crunched and smacked my lip on the window which had not rolled down all the way. I hit the damn window so hard that I thought I knocked my tooth out. I’m still worried that my front tooth is going to turn black and fall out. I’m also slightly concerned that I have a concussion from the impact. Can those radiate from lip to brain? Either way, my head, lip and tooth are killing me.

Teacher Mom is sleep-deprived, nightmare-ridden, scatter-brained and may be suffering a mild concussion. The kids say I’m acting the same as usual, other than the puffy lip, so I guess we’re off and running.