Dave Barry once wrote a book called Dave Barry's Guide to Guys. You should go to amazon and buy it. It's very funny.
My children work harder than usual to reinforce every gender stereotype,My older daughter went on a clothing strike at seventeen months because not every garment she owned was pink, whereas my sons are hit-and-miss on remembering to wear pants. In my part of the world, all of the cool kids have gender-bending kids, so it's possible that my children are so aggressively conforming to societal norms as part of an elaborate plot to embarrass me.
I was trying to potty train Lollipop today. It was a mistake; she isn't even eighteen months yet, but she kept taking her diaper off and hanging out in the bathroom. After forty minutes sitting together with her on the teeny Baby Bjorn potty, she fussed until I let her leave. She went straight to the children's room, peed on Genome's teddy bear (IT'S NOT A TEDDY BEAR IT'S A PUPPET, he would say), slipped in her own urine, smacked herself on the hard floor, and burst into tears.
Older son had a particularly Guide to Guys moment not half an hour later. He wandered up, casually, and asked, "Did Lollipop poop on the floor?"
I happened to know she hadn't. Like any sane mother, I took the peed-on-a-stuffed-animal as a cue to put the kid in a diaper and retire with a diet coke. That's important, because otherwise this story wouldn't happen; I'd have thrown everyone into the car and sped to the clinic to see if it's possible to have an ebola vaccination. Or e coli. Whichever.
Why would you ask, Genome?
"Because I ate something off of the floor, and it was yucky. I thought maybe Lollipop pooed there."
Remember. I am having a conversation with a child who is mildly curious whether he _just ate feces._
No, Lollipop didn't go on the floor, but why would you eat things off of the floor?
"I like to eat things off of the floor! Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is disgusting."
But . . . you might eat something really disgusting. Like, you know, baby poo.
"Right! So it is a surprise! And that is more fun."
My son is a tiny frat boy who lives in my house. And he's like this dead sober.
He had eaten a cake pop. Apparently not a very good one.
