Hotlanta

KC and I are in Atlanta for a few days, sans kids. It's very hot and humid, which I don't mind, but I miss the girls. Also, I'm a little afraid of what will happen while we're away.

Caroline, our former nanny now friend, is watching the girls overnight. I told her the vanoona story and she told me a story about how when her younger son was little he knew all the "official" terms for his genitalia. (She was a nurse in a former life.) Then she told me that one time Sophie was playing with a mirror at her house and had no pants on and discovered her lady parts.

sophie: whoa! what's that?

caroline: that's your vulva.

sophie: oh.

And that brings me to ask 2 questions:

1. Why was she "playing" with a mirror and no pants on?
2. Why "vulva"?

I don't even know the difference between a vulva and a vagina. Do we really need to distinguish it for my 4 year old? Am I going to come home to a lesson on the female anatomy compliments of Sophie?

Vanoona

It's been a long time since my last post, but something important has happened...Sophie has learned about her vagina. Here's how it went down:

[in the bathroom. Sohpie is on the potty.]

me: wipe in the front, please

[sophie looks confused and wipes erratically]

me: in the front

her: on my bottom

me: no, you wipe your bottom when you poop. when you go pee pee you wipe the front.

[sophie looks confused]

me: do you know what the front is called?

her: no

me: it's your vagina

[sophie mouths the word, trying to commit it to memory]

me: girls have vaginas. do you know what boys have?

her: yes

me: what?

her: a vanoona

Later that night, when she went to the bathroom before bed, she told me, "I'm going to wipe my little vagina!" Then she asked me if I had a big vagina. Both she and Ava were almost 9.5lbs, so I might've said, "Yes...thanks for that." But instead I told her that I have a "grown up vagina." That satisfied her.

The next day, she went to school talking about her Vacona. I warned her teacher, but nothing came of it.

Kids are mean

Of course, we all know this, but when it's your kid at the receiving end, it sucks.

Sophie goes to preschool 4 mornings a week and loves it. But there are 2 little girls there who are excluding her. Her teacher pulled me aside and let me know a.) that it was happening and b.) that she was dealing with it and c.) that Sophie seemed entirely undisturbed by it (naturally, because she lives on another, much happier, planet).

I found it hard to believe that at the age of 3 or 4, girls were already being mean...until I witnessed it myself. During circle time (yes, circle time) I watched as the two little girls made faces, moved away from and told Sophie to stop touching them. I also watched as their mothers did and said NOTHING. Whenever I see Sophie behaving badly, I put the major kabosh on it, but these two women did absolutely nothing.

What's wrong with them? Interestingly, they're not snobs. They're schlubby, unfashionable hippies. Are they just retarded?

And what's wrong with me that I'm so upset by this? I seriously fantasized about being mean to a 4-year-old girl. She's 4. I'm 37. It's a little pathetic.

kc loves censorship

KC made me take down a really good post—complete with photo—because he was worried about offending a certain insurance agent (let's just call him, "La Grande Tete").

Very unamerican of him.

Agitated

I'm so agitated and I don't know why. 7 months after Sophie was born I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. (All those years I thought everyone was counting the steps between their parking space and the entrance to Target and then feeling out of sorts when the number turned out to be odd.)I tried a medley of drugs until I found my anti-depressant of choice, Lexapro.

But now it seems that it's not working. And as anyone who has ever suffered from any of these conditions knows, once you're in the shitter, it's very hard to get yourself to the doctor.

So I remain agitated.

Fur

Look at my daughter. Have you ever seen such a sweet little Snow White? I want to eat her.

What you can't see in this picture is her back. If you did see it, you'd see that it is covered in black hair. Seriously. I promise you that you've never seen anything like it. I can most accurately describe it anecdotally:

I took her to the park to play with my friend's daughter. She peed in her pants, and when I was changing her, the back of her shirt rode up. My friend's little girl pointed and said, "Hey Mommy, she has fur!"

I mentioned it to her previous pediatrician and expressed concern. First, I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with her--hormones or whatever. Then I wanted to know if it would fall out on its own. And finally, I wanted to know if he had any thoughts on hair removal in preschoolers. Here's what he said, "You're of meditteranean descent and she shares your genes. It's what makes her unique."

I almost punched him in his penis. First of all, I'm not of "meditteranean descent". I'm of Jewish girl from LA decsent, and my great grandparents were from Russia. Also, I'm not particularly hairy. But most importantly, back hair is not what makes my child special, you retarded douche.

I actually love her back hair. She was covered in hair when she was born and I thought it was cute in a way only a mother can. But I know for a fact that if we do nothing about it, it will be a source of torture for her. She already gets teased by older kids. Thankfully, she's too oblivious to notice, but that'll end soon.

When she's 13 and demands it, we'll get it lasered off, but what to do between now and then? I worry.

When babies poop

Ava is a very, very good baby. Other than the first 6 weeks of her life, when she had untreated reflux and screamed nonstop, she has been a dream. Good sleeper, all smiles, extraordinarily cute, BUT...she has a poop issue.

Just after she was born, I was changing her diaper (with Caroline, thank God) and I lifted her little leg and the poop started flowing. She was like a miniature human soft serve machine. Every time I lifted her leg, more poop. It took two of us to keep it from escaping the changing table and creating a poop lava flow on to the floor. Two weeks later, at home, KC was changing her diaper and she shot poop across the room--hitting him enroute and showering our bedroom drapes (which we then referred to as the diahrrea drapes).

Since then she regularly has epic blowouts. We've developed a ranking system to decribe them to one another: 90 degrees mean it shot up the back and out of the diaper, 180 means out the front and back, and 360 is, of course, around the world.

I ask you, doesn't it seem amazing that a person who weighs not much more than a bag of flour and can't sit up by herself has the abdominal power to shoot liquid poop 6 feet across the room? I'm sure there's a biological explanation, but it still seems impossible.