“Pheobe, did you know you have a hole in your butt?”
“Yeah, duh. Everyone has a hole in their butt, even cats.”
“But did you know that’s where your butt penis is?”
“Um…I don’t have a butt penis.”
“I’m totally joking, it’s where your poop comes out.”
I have nothing else I can add to this except: raising boys.
Turd Burglar. Go ahead, laugh. You know you want to.
There is something about that phrase that, even as adults, we can’t help but laugh. No matter what definition you use, it’s funny. Even if you don’t know what it means, you laugh. Maybe it sounds funny. Maybe it brings out the 12 year old in you. Whatever it is, you can’t help but giggle. You still giggle at Lake Titicaca as well, admit it. Now, picture yourself driving down the road with the kids in the car. You have a head cold from hell, you’re trying not to throw your kids out the windows you’re frustrated because the head cold is getting the better of you, and you stop at a stop light behind a Dodge pickup truck with the licence plate “TRDBGLR”.
Looking back I’m pretty sure I wasn’t fully paying attention to anything, so when I first saw the licence plate I didn’t really notice. Then it hit me, TURD BURGLAR!!!!!! If it were possible to fall out of a car laughing, I would have. As you know, it is hard to hide anything from anyone kids while in a car, especially when you are laughing so hard you start coughing. Suddenly all arguing and hitting in the backseat stops. “Mommy, what’s so funny?”
On any other day I would have been able to come up with a quick response, but being sick puts a damper on any whit and quick comebacks I may have been able to muster. “Nothing, it’s just the licence plate on the truck in front of us.”
“What does it say?”
“Um……..” Think Brandi, THINK! Nothing. “It says turd burglar.” Well that was a dumb answer.
“What’s a turd?”
“It’s poop.”
Reminder, the word poop is one of the funniest things you can say to a child. It ranks up there with booger, butt crack, penis, and fart. You can only imagine the fits of laughter that exploded from the backseat when I said poop. It then turned into a chorus of the words poop and turd repeated in unison as if it were nothing more than a simple round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. It only stopped when Pheobe realized she didn’t know what the word burglar meant, and here I thought I was going to get away with turd being another word for poop and that’s it.
“A burglar is someone who breaks into places and steals things.”
“Why would someone want to steal poop?”
There is no way anyone could explain their way out of why someone would want to steal poop. There isn’t even a nonchalant way of explaining it so you don’t really have to explain it. My kids aren’t “old enough” to understand the, um, sexual meaning especially since they still think sex is when two grownups wrestle , and I’m not about to have my kids calling me a turd burglar because I walked in on them in the bathroom.The best I could come up with is, “You’ll understand when you’re an adult. Just DON’T say turd burglar at school!”
“But can we say it now? In the car?”
“If you must.”
The rest of the car ride was spent singing the new phrase while giggling and double checking about why someone would want to steal a turd. I was hopeful that was the end of the turd burglar incident until this morning when Theo leaned over to Pheoebe and whispered, “you’re a turd burglar.” My ride to work was then adorned with the joyful giggles of the unknowing turd burglars in my back seat.
I admit it, I have very unique children as many of you have probably already noticed. With a mommy who finds patchouli sexy and names evrything most things, you really can’t be surprised don’t judge me. So when Pheobe started saying that she poops flowers I didn’t question her. I simply smiled at her as she showed me each and every ‘flower’ poop and pretended to agree with her that they did indeed resemble the shape of flowers. Even though the smell was far from that of flowers.
When we went to Maine to visit my parents a few months ago her poops suddenly turned into dinosaur poops. Again I didn’t question. She simply stated that when she was home she pooped flower poops and when she was at Nanni and Poppa’s she pooped dinosaur poops. It was a very simple concept that even a sleep deprived mommy could fathom. And so it’s been since New Years, flower poops and dinosaur poops. I’ve got this, I can handle this.
So imagine my surprise yet again when Pheobe came running out of the bathroom on Sunday full of excitement saying that she pooped a duck! “A duck?” I asked. “But Pheobe, you only poop flower poops at home.” Do not throw a wrench in my parenting abilities now. “No mommy….its a DUCK!” I was then whisked away by a 2 year old with her pants around her ankles back into the bathroom to see what in the world she was talking about. And sure as shit…there was a duck poop. Being the mommy who is overly proud of every little accomplishment my minions have, I promptly took a picture and sent it to everyone I knew. I think we have our next Christmas card.
Mommy Undressed 