I remember panicking when the doctors at the hospital told me I could bring my brand new bouncing baby boy home. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in the hospital forever where nurses and doctors could monitor what I was doing and tell me I was doing everything right. Despite all the research I did on what babies eat and what to do if this or that happens, I was NOT ready to raise a child. Shocking, I know. I suddenly realized I had no idea what-so-ever what I had gotten myself into. This is the same realization I have EVERY damn day.

Although I no longer panic when my kids get sick and I’ve raised vegetable lovers by some stroke of unicorn magic I really have no idea what I’m doing. These creechers throw me side balls every day. With them the sky is green and the ocean is pink. Cats don’t have skin and dinosaurs don’t eat other dinosaurs. All things the common persons knows obviously.

Lately most dinner conversations have turned to the human anatomy and its functions. Where does your food go after you swallow it? How does your body make poop? Where exactly is your heart? What is the bone in your thigh called? Side note, I’m not a science person. Fun with corn starch and baking soda volcanos are about as far into it as I get, yet both kids have eagerly sat through numerous anatomy drawings of the digestive and vascular systems. Reaching deep into my brain for whatever I can remember from my last college biology and nutrition classes I’ve come up with an elementary explanations of evolution and nutrient absorption. I’m not sure how much this has actually sunk in to their little brains seeing as how they are only 6 and 3, but they do enjoy saying words like microvilli and mastication. We’ve really been getting into this science stuff…….and then last night happened.

In the middle of eating just the corn and chicken out of the chilli, Theo looked up at me as if he knew something about science that would in fact stump and baffle me. His eyes were right. He did, in fact, stump and baffle me with the part human anatomy I didn’t think we would cover for a few more years at first. “Mommy, did you know there are balls in my penis?” *grins and eye sparkle*

Like I said, curve balls and I have absolutely no idea how to raise children.

“Yes Theo, I did know you have balls in your penis,” clears throat “but they are actually under your penis not in it.”

“Ok, but did you know that my pee comes from my balls?”

“No, your pee comes from your bladder.”

“Which is in your balls right?”

At this point in time I want to crawl under the table and join Pheobe and her teddy bear picnic. She left the conversation after the word penis as it has nothing to do with her “fagina”. I was not, nor will I ever be, ready to have a discussion with my son about his twig and berries.

“No, your bladder is right here,” pokes him in his lower abdomen. He lifts up his shirt and looks, and then pulls the front of his pants out…..and looks. This might have actually made sense to him.

“Then what’s in my balls?” Crickets are now chirping loudly in my kitchen. In January.

“Babies are made from the stuff in your balls,” the best I could come up with on such short notice.

“Babies come from my balls?!?!” Shit.

“Kind of. When you’re a lot older.” Fuck.

“How?”

“When you drink things like milk and water it goes into your belly and intestines and bladder. when it’s in your bladder it fills up and tells you when you have to pee. That’s why I don’t let you drink a lot after dinner. So your bladder doesn’t get full while you’re sleeping.”

Crisis averted. Mommy wins this one but probably not the next one. No baby talks. No sex talks. For now we will stick to the knowledge that babies grow in mommy’s bellies and they come out of her butt.