Musings for Thursday

When we found out that our third child would be another boy, I made sure to point out that I would still be Queen of the Castle. Even the dog is a boy, and I swear sometimes having Hubby around is like having a 4th child. Like any good queen, I have borne three male heirs. In an effort to convey their personalities and give you a glimpse of what the future holds for the Kingdom of BoyMommy, I offer the following photos:

This here's the child whom we will call Large.  (As in Small, Medium, and . . . ) With a name like his, one would think he's headed for the White House. His middle name is Worthington; it is a family name, passed on from Hubby Worthington Sr. to my husband, Hubby Worthington. I agreed to this middle name because I was sure it had a long family history. Turns out, Sr.'s parents wanted a prestigious-sounding name so they flipped through the phone book until they found one right smack dab in the middle of the W's.

Anyway, Large weighs all of 50 lbs. because he subsists on a diet of mainly peanut butter sandwiches and apple sauce. He loves every sport, which is evident in the left photo; although blurry, you can still see his ensemble: little stick arms poking out of a basketball jersey and a football helmet. Chances are he's wearing his cup too, but this is a family channel.

"Medium" Dale is my creative little free spirit. He only has one volume: loud. He is an artist whose specialty is mixed media, particularly scotch tape and staples. His personality will serve him well as an adult, and yet I see many trips to the principal's office over the course of the next 12 years. As I type, he is wearing a Derek Jeter jersey. That's it. Just a jersey. He's Commando Jeter. He's CoJeter.

When we lived in Manhattan I tried to make a name for myself. First, I am absolutely POSITIVE that we were the only family in our tony Upper East Side neighborhood of Carnegie Hill whose child's middle name was chosen in order to honor a deceased Nascar driver. (God bless Dale Earnhardt. Guess God needed another driver. . . . please hold up 3 fingers now.)

Second, I'm pretty sure I'm known as either the lady who put a wet, naked, screaming, kicking child into a cab because he refused to get dressed after swimming lessons, OR the lady whose child stuck a piece of previously chewed gum into his mouth after finding it in the ashtray of a New York City taxi cab. That Medium is my claim to fame!

"Small" is 6 months old today! I can't believe he's been here half a year already. He's bulimic; he binges and purges, usually all over my shirt. It's hard to take him out in public sometimes because he toots like an old man. Who is hard of hearing. In the library. People stare at ME like I've been eating a steady diet of beans and cabbage. The good news is that when I eat beans and cabbage, I can let loose as long as he's with me.

I have to admit, though, that I have failed my children. For those of you out there who do not live with boys, let me fill you in on a little secret. Leaving the toilet seat up is the LEAST of your worries. I would praise any male in my household who left the seat up because that would imply that he raised it in the first place. There's nothing like squatting first thing in the morning only to discover that you've got someone else's peepee on the backs of your thighs.

But wait. There's more.

Large and Medium share a jack-and-jill bathroom, so I only go in there in the mornings when we're getting ready for school and in the evenings when I'm supervising what I LOOSELY call tooth brushing. A week or so ago I realized the boys didn't have any toilet paper in their bathroom, but I got sidetracked (It happens sometimes . . . ) and I forgot to replace it. DAYS passed before I remembered. Now I know there's been some poopin' going on in that bathroom, and yet no one has mentioned the lack of toilet paper. It's as if they don't care that there is no paper with which to wipe their behineys.

And yet there's more!

This morning after the boys left for school, I went into the powder room and found that one of the boys had left a "present" in the toilet and didn't flush. (I'm not holding out hope for hand washing either, if I'm being honest.) Except there was no toilet paper in the toilet bowl which leads me to believe that there was no wiping. Gee, I can't wait for THOSE fruit-of-the-looms to make it into the laundry. Apparently my children are in need of some remedial potty training. A GED program, if you will . . . Good Elimination Disposal.

In other, completely unrelated, news, I weighed in at Weight Watchers today. I admitted previously that I have been off the wagon (and in the pantry) and I need to get back to tracking my food. I also realize that I need to exercise. The thing is, I don't like to sweat. I would use the Wii Fit, but my Mii is kind of a b*tch. First of all, she's fatter than everyone else in my family. She is wearing a cute pink shirt and a sassy little haircut though. When I step on the board, the scale measurement increases rapidly and then she tells me, "That's obese!"

See? B*tch!

Then she hunches her shoulders over and tells me it's been 200-some days since my last workout. Yeah, well, I had a baby! Where can I plug in the info that explains why my boobs look like I'm lugging cantaloupes around in water balloons?

When we were in NYC, I used to run around the Reservoir in Central Park. (I'm playing it fast and loose with the word "run.") I've long said that I only run if there's a big dog behind me or cake in front of me. The problem is that I drank a lot of beer and ate at a lot of great restaurants while we lived there, which kinda hindered my weight loss. Now I don't run because my knees hurt, my knees hurt because I'm too heavy, and I'm too heavy because I don't run. It's an endless cycle.

Cycling. (You like that segue?) I was going to take my bike out the other day but I need to put air in the tires. Plus I can't figure out how to make my hair look cute while wearing a bike helmet. And I need to purchase a bike helmet. We live in a golf community, so I could always take up golf. I'd have to go back to work in order to pay for my membership, but I definitely like the idea of a sport that requires special shoes, has a classy dress code, and permits driving instead of walking/running.

Until next time . . .