Spongebrain Boogarpants

For the record, I loathe Spongebob Squarepants. While it may earn me some enemies among mommies, it's true. Mostly because it's SO. FREAKING. ANNOYING, but also because it messes with your child's brain function. (Seriously, the link is to a NY Times article about it.)

To fully confess, I also can't STAND Yo Gabba Gabba or Dora the Explorer (though strangely I can stomach Go Diego Go). Crap, I say! Crap! What are you filling your precious angels' heads with?? "My kids brains are full of swear words and science," she said proudly, and shamefully.

Seeing as I haven’t posted anything since early December I feel that a new entry is overdue. I also feel like I have had so much going on and I know I have bountiful blog fodder over the holidays and all, but my brain is mush and I am overwhelmed and underinspired. Cohesion just isn’t going to happen. Therefore, please enjoy (or tolerate?) the following mishmash:

1. Who else loves all the celebrity appearances on Sesame Street? Neil Patrick Harris is the Fairy Shoe Person on Sesame Street. Pretty rad if you ask me. Also a huge fan of the lullaby by Ricky Gervais. But come on, Jessica Alba, it’s borderline when you define the word “scrumptious” for my three-year-old boy. We get it. You’re scrumptious. Although, good job getting Jude Law to demonstrate the word “cling”. I feel you, Sesame Street beasties. We all have crushes on Jude too (I'm looking at you, husband). Oh, and of course there’s the Katy Perry scandal. Perhaps she ought not to have worn a bare-chested pointy booby dress, but I still enjoy when musicians parody their songs for toddlers.

Is it just me, or are celebrities infinitely more appealing after they act like idiots on Sesame Street and SNL? Justin Timberlake went up like a bajillion notches in my book after all his SNL antics. Jake Gyllenhaal wore an octopus on his head on Sesame Street. I like him way more now. How-EVER, freaking bug-eyed Elijah Wood, for the love of God WHY did you do the nightmarish “Puppet Master” dance on the insufferable show “Yo Gabba Gabba”? Seriously. This is what nightmares are made of. Dancey dance? With a creeper stash? Ick ick ick ick ick ick barf.

2. On a completely different note, I am succeeding at pseudo-adherence to my new year’s resolution to work out more. Anyone else? We got a massive total gym—a really nice one—for dirt cheap on Craigslist, but the real catalyst was getting TV in the basement. Now I watch one full episode of What Not to Wear while exercising and then I am all kinds of self-improved...in my mind. Then I miss a day and make up for it by eating superfluous ice cream and chocolate and cheese and pasta while scoffing at Stacy and Clinton’s hatred of sweatpants, thrift store clothes, and hand-me-downs. Ever-so-slightly schizophrenic.

3. We didn’t take our Christmas tree down until January 25^th. The exterior lights are still up, and were still turned on until recently. That's okay, right? Don’t judge. I like to feel festive for more than a week, although the greater motivation was probably the lack of motivation I had for taking it down. Plus the cat totally loved sleeping under the tree; we thought he might run away, heartbroken, if we took it down.

4. My almost-four-year-old boy Dirt whistles as well as some adults. He just bops around all the time, whistling a happy little tune. It’s amazing, especially to someone like me who, embarrassingly enough, can’t whistle. At. All. (Okay so I can manage this super weird low tone, complete with super dumb face. ) In other music news, my two-year-old girl Tuesday started singing along with me when we have lullaby time, and it is THE cutest thing in the world—even if she seems completely tone-deaf, making her the musical black sheep on my mother’s side of musical whizzes.

5. I am constantly taken aback by their adorableness and incredible, ever-growing abilities. Dirt has uncanny creativity and talent in name-calling (thanks to his dear ol’ dad), skillfully pairing some gross substance with a body part, i.e. the archetypal “butt-head”. Wait. That's two body parts. Whatever, you get it. He takes the compound insult to new places, such as “boogar ass” and “poop hair”, which would make any mother swell with pride. When I correct him, or if I roll my eyes and shake my head, he just laughs and laughs…though not as loudly as his father. I’d like to point out that I DO try to limit my kids’ exposure to swear words, but…some things seem beyond the realm of possibility, like keeping the house clean. Still, the kids both relish telling me “don’t say that, it’s a bad word” even when only appropriate words are being used. It is difficult explaining to them why some words are not okay, but that’s a whole sociological debate, moral/ethical question, and history lesson that I don’t care to research or discuss. What do other people tell their kids?

6. I love watching them learn (even if it involves picking up the occasional naughty word). They really are spongey little creatures. They are absolutely fascinated with everything. Anatomy, geology, geography, biology…it is so cool telling them about stuff. Don't fret, I'm not as overachievey as that sounds. We just talk about bones and organs, rocks and metals, countries and continents, animals and nature, etc. Not like I'm busting out AP textbooks for my preschoolers or anything, though I do get a kick out of teaching them to use words like "deciduous", "omnivore" and "sternum" (even if their pronunciation is way off). 

Dirt got a toy praying mantis awhile back, which inspired us to show him YouTube videos of mantises, some shown eating fish and mice (evidently mantises can get rather large). So one morning, waaaaayyyyy earlier than he usually gets up, he bursts into my room, eyebrows way up, and announces, "I want to watch praying mantis getting a mouse!" That is a funny first thing to hear at the crack of dawn.

The best thing is the way they interpret what they’ve heard; when some random factoid is regurgitated with a totally new spin on it, delivered as matter-of-factly as possible. Did you know, for example, that all Superheroes have wings? According to Dirt, “I'm a superstar, not a superhero, cuz I am a boy with no wings.” And I love how they take everything literally. When his Grampy teased him, saying “I’m gonna fix your wagon”, Dirt replied with a perplexed expression, “But I don’t have a wagon.” 

I also love when they try to copy certain actions, like if they try to exercise with me (since I’m always working out). When the 2012 Olympics were on, watching gymnastics resulted in two naked toddlers rolling around on the floor and then standing up excitedly with their arms strait in the air. The fact that Tuesday interprets insane Olympian flipping-flying through the air as spinning and hopping followed by rolling on the floor is pretty awesome. Dirt also managed a somersault, which is totes legit.

7. And finally, for lucky number seven, I present to you the conclusion to end all conclusions: an excerpt from a masterpiece Mad Lib. Remember those things? I used to do them aaaalllll the time. See if you can guess which words we filled in. Also, there's a slight possibility you won't find this as hilarious as I do.

Three little billy goats lived by a bridge where there was an ecclesiastic troll who loved to eat sedatives… Finally, the big billy goat arrived at the bridge. "'Who's that rejoicing on my bridge? I'm going to eat you!" yelled the pleasure-seeking troll as he jumped out waving his groin wildly.