Vintonville

So me and Little Dude are pals. You know, until he decides to give his underpants a little poo kiss or continues his quest to create a Sacagawea-sized bald spot in his hair by tugging at it.  Or when I make him brush his teeth or say his prayers when he’s “too tired” or tell him to come shopping with the family when he thinks just “Mama” to go so we can stay and play Star Wars.  Or when I’ll inevitably ground him or yell at him for talking to his “Mother” that way or bust him for coming home drunk some time in the future .

So yeah, we’re BFF except for those “Papa, you’re MEAN!!” times.

In the interim, I’m soaking up the good times that are having the Little Dude I’d always imagined, which makes tonight’s activity so fun. Thanks to my pal Andy, Little Dude is heading with me to an early screening of Pixar’s latest movie: Up. It’s gonna be like my two gay dads, except for the gay part — or like an evening block of Dan and Andy Plus Three, but without the sneaky late night visits, hen-pecking wife and a cadenced title that rolls off the tongue.

Either way, Little Dude’s eyes get big when he talks about it and that’s the stuff I like best– seeing the world can still be a cool place with all kinds of little excitements tucked away in its seemingly commonplace twists and turns.

Since I’m in mixed company and need to perpetuate an image of cleanly wholesomeness, I won’t use the uncensored term for “poop-faced”, but I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of it– and while Little Dude doesn’t fit the slang definition, he  recently fit the literal.

So Little Sis is a cute, squirming poop machine. She sleeps, eats, cries, poops and gazes and then cries some more. She is, however, thoughtful enough to let us know when it’s time for some clean underpants:

Little Sis: “Grunt”

Little Sis’ Booty: “Prrrrrt”

Lady-Friend: :”Thank You, Little Sis.”

The other day, a call for diaper change was heard loud and clear. Lady-Friend dutifully went to the bedroom for some cleaning and changing. Little Dude, being the helpful Little Dude he is, followed and, standing roughly face to bum at the changing table, was sadly unawares of the fury about to be unleashed.

As Little Dude was watching the miracle of the diaper change, Little Sis had round two.

Splort.

Normally, there’s a diaper good and ready to catch that gunk. With diaper mid-change, the catch was made by Little Dude’s face which, with a sudden, splashy retort from Little Sis’ business end, gained instant freckles.

Little Dude let out an “Aaaaaaagh!”, Lady-Friend couldn’t stop laughing and, after a putting a respectable dent in our ready supply of handi-wipes, a valuable lesson was learned:

Baby-bum + close facial proximity = Poopface.

Breakfast art is rad. Especially when it’s unexpected.

One minute Little Dude is tearing up pancakes and smashing blueberries into them– the next he’s created Boy. With “mustachio”.

So there’s a lot of hustle and bustle around here with Little Sis’ arrival and all, but we also had another arrival earlier in the week.

Stinky Pete, the craptastic Marmot.

I’m not sure if he actually lives under our deck, but we found the little bastage snooping around last fall and this last weekend we found him stretched out and enjoying the good life on one of our boulders.

After seeing us, he zipped to the edge of the deck and eyed us for a while before slipping underneath.

Two days later, the deck was covered what had to be that little sucker’s weight in craplets and the great outdoors was smelling 103% more musk-tastic than the usual season appropriate eau du pear-blossom.

I haven’t had to sweep the deck clean of any more Marmo-dumps this week, so I’m hoping our joint was more of a hostel/bed & breakfast than a summer home for the ungrateful slob. On the plus side, his musktastic funk seems to be fading– now a faint top-note as opposed to a punch to the olfactory’s sense of decency.

Good DAY to you, Stinky Pete.

It’s an installment that’s been a long time coming, but has arrived nonetheless.

We’ve been eating a lot of Quinoa lately. It’s like couscous, but deliciouser. The other night we threw some no-sodium chicken broth in there which ended up tasting like poison. As Little Dude was pounding it down, we asked, “So how do you like it?”

“It’s so delicious, it breaks my heart.”

And not a second later: “What does break your heart mean?”

Lady Friend was preparing some peas for Little Dude who, apparently, needed some confirmation, “Peas make you go pee-pee, right?”

Little Dude’s been getting into dinosaurs lately and is pretty particular about the way they roar. He gave Lady Friend a recent reprimand, “Mama, you can’t play dinosaurs because you don’t sound like a dinosaur. You sound like a sick elephant.”

Lady Friend and Little Dude were out doing some yard work and discovering praying mantis egg sacks. As Lady Friend tried her hardest to induce labor, Little Dude was walking along the rocks in the back yard. He slipped and fell into the bushes. Lady-Friend ran over to see if he was ok, where he popped up, brushed himself off and said, “It’s all part of the plan.”

Little Dude enjoys flexing his muscle with some pooting now again. It’s surefire comedy, but you have to draw the manner line out somewhere. I guess. So after a blast of flatulent gusto, we took a moment to explain how, if a “little poot” ever happens when other people are around, Little Dude should say excuse me. “We have to when we let a humongous poot, too!”

Little Dude? Huge fan of his Mama. As we were eating dinner he looks up and says, “Mama, you look so beautiful it makes me want to hug and smooch you.” I must have looked dejected, as he loaded another one up: “Papa, you look so awesome. You like when I say that? I know you doooooooooo.”

Little Dude is growing. Last year’s summer t-shirts have become belly shirts. To compensate, Lady Friend ordered up a bunch of clearence stuff from Children’s Place. The box arrived yesterday and had an Irish soccer tee, complete with the obligatory shamrock. “This rock sham shirt is awesome, huh Papa?”