I went on a date with a very cute boy yesterday.

Once upon a time, when we lived in Denver and the kids’ gramma did, too, she would take them on Saturday nights. Sometimes, though, she would just take one of them. Those were the days before 3of3, and the odd-boy-out and I would go on a date. A FANCY date. A not-McDonalds date. Since those days, gramma has moved to South Africa and we moved to Canada, back to Denver, and back to Canada again. Oh, and I went and had another baby. I totally screwed up date night for my boys.

2of3 is taking it the hardest. He lost his place as the baby and he lost his place as the IT boy at school. He doesn’t know where he his in his life right now, and we are all paying for it.

Yesterday, dad was actually home for once and 1of3 had a birthday party to attend, so we dumped big brother on the party and the baby on dad and 2of3 and I hit the town. The mall. Whatever. It was awesome.

I just followed him for a while. We started at Walmart, where he got to choose a present. He picked out a $20 pack of hockey cards. (A week before Christmas. Grrr.) We also grabbed a travel checkers kit. And then we headed over to Starbucks. We both got grown-up sized hot chocolates (YUM) and sat at Starbucks where my 7 year old kicked my motherfucking ass at some checkers without me letting him win in any way (not true).

After that, he thought we should ride the little train they have set up for babies around Santa. So we did. We only got nasty looks from about half of the people running the thing. We totally held hands while the train rode around the mall. Oh, we are suckers for the romance. And then 2of3 wanted to go into his favorite store in the whole wide world….House Of Knives. Creepy? A little. Almost my favorite store? Perhaps. We looked at axes and swords and old-fashioned shaving kits and all sorts of sharp, pointy, shiny things. Oh, we are suckers for the sharp, the pointy and the shiny.

And then we went to the grocery store (don’t you want to go on a date with me now?) and 2of3 got his dad a chocolate bar and his brother and sister each a necklace out of the vending machine thing. He’s thoughtful like that.

We came home after that and for the first time in I can’t tell you when, I did NOT have a child rocking in his chair, talking at me incessantly, picking at his brother or whining because the baby got more milk than him. I had a pleasant, sweet kid. I had MY kid back. It. Was. Glorious.

He decreed that Date Night shall be a regular event around here, one Sunday every month. He wanted every Sunday, but I had to remind him that there are 3 other people in this house who would like a date with me, and he agreed to once a month. I wonder where he’ll take me next time. Maybe Home Depot.

Chris, today, was talking about circumcisions. He was in no way asking for any advice, and so naturally, like a good e-friend and loyal reader, I am totally going to give him some.

*ahem*

I don’t agree with circumcision. I don’t agree with it because both of my sons are circumcised.

There comes a point in your pregnancy, when you know it’s a boy, when you and your spouse have the talk about this. Our talk went like this:

Him: What do you think about this circumcision thing?

Me: I don’t know…what do you think?

Him: Well, I’d kind of like to not explain why mine looks different than his.

Me: Well, last time I checked, I didn’t have one of those, so I’ll leave this up to you. But, if you do it, I want NO PART of it.

Him: Cool.

And that was it. 1of3 was born, and dad went with matching accessories. I really had no part of it; I wasn’t in the room when they did it and I skipped the next few diaper changes. Because, yuck. And ouch. Youch.

And then, when 2of3 was born, it wasn’t really a choice at all, was it?

Here’s what they don’t tell you about circumcisions, or at least what they do tell you but you absolutely cannot grasp until you’re dealing with it. Sometimes, sometimes the skin grows back a little. Sometimes, even if you Vaseline the crap out of it and do the alcohol swabs religiously like they tell you to, sometimes nature fights you and fights you hard and you are left, all alone, at 3 in the morning, to have to roll back that skin that has totally ignored your good intentions and healed itself right back to the tip of that thingy you were trying to trim it from. You have to roll it back, which honestly just means ripping it away from where it wants to be. You have no choice at this point…it HAS to be done. And as much as it sucks for you, what with the bleeding and the oozing and stuff, it sucks that much more for your child who has just gone through a rather strenuous move and really just wants to sleep.

There are other things they don’t tell you. They don’t tell you that if you ask for a circumcision, they will do it, and they will do it even if your little man is indeed a little man. They will do it even though that thingy isn’t sticking out far enough for them to get a decent hold of, and you will have to suffer through the cleaning and the crying and all the headaches, and when it’s all over and you man has grown a little, you will not be able to tell they did it at all. They will do this because they will do anything you’re willing to pay them to do. It will not bother you right away, but when the kid’s 3 or so, you’re going to be mighty annoyed at the whole uncircumcised-though-totally-circumcised deal.

There is another thing they don’t tell you. They don’t tell you that sometimes they won’t finish it. They don’t tell you that they do the bottom skin first, and then check for things, and then do the top. They don’t tell you that if they get half way in and the check doesn’t go well, that you are left with a half-circumcised boy.

On the off-chance that your son has a crooked urethra, they will do surgery to fix it, about when the child is one. They will need skin to graft after the surgery, and that foreskin is prime graft fodder. So, when they circumcise a boy, they cut off the top of the skin, do a quick check of the urethra, and then get the bottom half. Unless the urethra is not straight, at which point they stop. A year later, you go to the doctor to schedule the surgery to fix the urethra, and thereby remove the remaining flap of skin, only to find out that in the past year that urethra has totally straightened itself right out.

You now have three options:

1. Schedule a cosmetic, elective surgery that no insurance in the galaxy will pay for, because after your hospital stay for the birth, circumcision is considered major surgery involving general anesthesia and stuff while he’s still young enough to totally forget it.
2. Deal with it until he’s a little older, when maybe he’ll just have fuzzy memories of the whole thing in his adult life, until you can explain what the deal is and trust that he can get a local anesthetic and not mess with it after.
3. Ignore it and pray like crazy that he never has to change in a locker room, and perhaps start a savings account for the therapy bills you’ll have to pay when he realizes what you’ve done to him*.

We went with option 3. We really meant to go with 2, but by the time it came to deal with it, well, he was kind of fond of his little weiner and we didn’t have the heart to tell him it was different. And besides, there are advantages to having only your bottom foreskin. It makes a lovely hiding spot for small rocks and marbles; you can fill it with water and then toddle over to that new baby your parents just brought home and dump the water all over his weird, bald head. I don’t really ever want to know if there are any other perks.

What this is going to come down to is that one day, he’s going to figure this out. One day, he’s going to have to make a choice about this. I imagine that your feelings about that part of your body, as a man, are kind of pivotal to your image of yourself, and that is going to get called into question someday for my son. And all of this will happen because of an unnecessary, silly, traditional nip tuck. I know it’s unnecessary because, as you read up there, my other son had it done but it really wasn’t done, you know? I had to care for a circumcision, but then I had to care for it, and teach him to care for it, as though it had never happened. And I had to teach my oldest son that same care, just for one half.

So, yes, both of my sons were circumcised. And I regret those two decisions more than almost any other I’ve made with them. But hell, it makes for good, embarrassing stories later. And Chris, I hope this helps and I also hope you don’t mind that I left your comment on my blog. That would’ve been a mighty long comment.

*Or when he realizes that you’ve told the entire world about it, via the internet. Sorry, 1of3.

Today we’re talking about sex again, and thank god it won’t be as awkward as last time. I should mention that I had more visits that day, by far, than I have ever had ever in almost four years of blogging. Which means you are all dirty whores. Which means I love you all that much more.

The other day I had to go to the store to get, well, err, girl stuff. That time of the month stuff. This is not a small trip for me. This is a basket full of stuff. My uterus runs on overdrive. That night, I was telling daddio about how nervous I was while I was buying all that stuff, and how thrilled I was that the boys didn’t ask me (again) what it was all for. I have already had that conversation with them, several times. 1of3 watched his sister be born, so he gets the whole ‘bloody mess’ part of every girls world. And, heck, I got pregnant again when my boys were 5 and 7; I had some ’splainin to do.

My boys are well-versed in the ways of the woman.

Anyway, I was telling dad about the relief that came with the conversation-dodge, and he looked at me and said, “You know, Mr Lady, you know you don’t have to tell them everything.” I argued that if they ask, I have a responsibility to answer them honestly. He countered with, “But, you DON’T HAVE TO TELL THEM EVERYTHING.”

When 1of3 was four, we were driving from Denver to Colorado Springs, and in our hour in the car, he asked me where babies came from. I gave him the ‘when a momma and a daddy loves each other very much’ schpeal, and he listened, and when I was done he said, “Um, that doesn’t sound right.” I took a deep breath, and then I told him everything. I didn’t tell him the fun bits, but I did lay it all out, biologically at least. You know, ‘mommas have these parts, and daddys have these parts, and these things happen to those parts’ and you know the rest. When I was all done, he gazed out the car window for a minute and then, quite matter-of-factly, said, “Ok.”

And that was that.

When I was pregnant with 3of3, I told them every stage of her development. They looked at baby websites with me. They wanted to know how it all worked, and I told them.

When they were smaller, they both at some point came across what I like to call the Red Tent stash. (Brilliant book, by the way. Read it if you haven’t.) They both asked what those little tubes that look like candy were (why on earth someone thought it was a good idea to package tampons in small, brightly-colored wrappers that no child ever can resist, I’ll never know). So, I told them. I told them all of it.

Apparently, my husband doesn’t think I should tell them all this stuff. No one told him, he said, and he figured it all out in time. He had a mom and three older sisters, though; he was bound to figure it all out eventually.

Here’s my thought on the subject: No one every told me anything. Ever. All I knew was that when my period started, that meant I was having sex and that if I could use a tampon, that meant that I had already stuck something else up there. Those were the facts of life I was given. Embarrassing confession: I was 16 before I knew that there was an opening down there other than a urethra. Six. Teen. Of course I got information from the hormonal, sexually abused, drug addict 13 year old at my middle school; she was the only person I knew who was willing to talk to me about it.

Pretty soon, these kids are going to realize that I am A) fallible and B) not cool on any level and C) not who they want to talk to about personal things, like puberty or sex or body odor. I feel like it’s my job to get the right information in there now, while they’re still willing to listen to me. I feel like it is my responsibility to set an example by answering their questions honestly and as thoroughly as possible and necessary, so that when I ask them for honest, thorough answers, they will remember that I was not embarrassed, or awkward, or nervous about those questions. I want this to be an open conversation in this house. I feel like it’s super crazy important that I set myself up as the go-to person, the repository of knowledge about all things teen-aged. Because, honestly, I don’t want to be a grandma for a while. I don’t want my kids to have kids young, like I did. I want them to have college and travel and experiences.

I want them to own their bodies, and to never feel embarrassment or confusion about what’s happening to them. And believe you me, it’s starting to happen. And so, I tell them everything. I tell them as they ask and I use the glorious power of the internet for all those things I know they aren’t ever going to ask about. 1of3 got an email in his inbox a few weeks ago from his gross old mother with a link to this website that just said, “Please read this and ask me any questions you have after.” I got an email in my inbox a day later that just said, “Thanks, mom. That was good information (yes, he says things like good information).” We talked about it a little over dinner, and I reminded him to let me know as those things happened. He said that he would, or maybe he’d ask his dad or his godfather, too.

So, do I think I’m telling my kids too much? Maybe. Time will tell, really. But I think a nine year old who already knows what’s coming, and who already knows three people he can go to for advice, and who already knows those three people will treat him like the man he is becoming, well, that’s a good thing. That, I think, is what makes a confident child.

And that is my whole job.

I need your help. I have to order school pictures by TOMORROW and I can’t decide which ones to go with. We all know how serial-killer-esque beautiful my boys look in pictures. Please, vote. Today. Baby books and Gigi’s are counting on you!

Your choices are 1:
2:3:And 4:

Choose one shot for each kid. Voting made easy here:

Right behind me, right now, is this:He’s been like that since 6. At dinner, he said he didn’t feel well which, in 9 year old, translates into, “I had my first sleepover in Canada last night and ate my body weight in candies and Dr. Peppers and slept exactly three whole minutes last night”.

Poor thing, he’s tired.

You know how, when you first get them, how you stare at them while they’re sleeping and you just want to die because they’re so sweet and chubby and yummy? Yeah, that doesn’t ever go away.