That moment when you realize you helped raise the next generation of the village...

It all started because the Impossible Son said, "One of my friends is pansexual."

I blinked, because this was a definite non-sequiter not related to the conversation we were having, but I'm well used to this sort of thing because... that's just the way my kids' brains work.  And I admit it, I'm kind of that way, too.  So, I said, "Really?  What makes you say that?"

"Well..." he hedged.

"Do you know what it means?" I asked while keeping my eyes on the road, because I had just picked him up from school and wanted to not, you know, run off the road into a ditch.

"Yeah," he said, "it means you'll basically have sex with anything that stands still long enough."

Wow, I thought, and knew I had to nip that one in the bud.  "Nope, not even close," I said firmly.

"But... that's what my friends said it meant," he protested.

"Yeah, well, they don't know what it means, either," I said dryly.  "Being pansexual means you're attracted to a person, not their gender.  Gender doesn't matter to you, it's the person themselves that attracts you."

"Oh," he said thoughtfully, then he frowned at me.  "Then... why didn't my friends know that?"

I shrugged.  "Because a lot of folks don't even bother to learn what those things mean."

"I thought that was being heterosexual..."

"No," I said, wondering how the hell he'd gotten so mixed up about this, "being heterosexual means being attracted to someone of the opposite sex.  And," I said before he could ask, "being homosexual means being attracted to someone of the same sex as you.   And being bisexual means being attracted to either sex."

We kept chatting until we got home, and I think I cleared it up for him, but wow...

I shouldn't be too surprised, though, that he's mixed up.  Last year, the 6th grade assistant principal told my son he needed to keep some friction burns he had on his hands covered with bandaging, not because it was hygienic, or would keep them clean, but... because he could pick up AIDS from the surfaces of the desks in the classrooms and the tables in the cafeteria.

*watches the collective jaw drop*

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too.

So, going by that shining example, along with the fact that what passes for sex education in the schools in our small town is of the abstinence variety, it's no big surprise that my son's friends have no clue whatsoever what any of those terms mean.

No.  Really.

There is a disturbingly high rate of teen pregnancy in our little town.  My son is in 7th grade.  There's already a girl in his class that is expecting.  A girl at the Impertinent Daughter's high school went into labor on the first day of school.

I have news for all those parents who keep saying that they don't want comprehensive sex education taught in the schools because it might give their kids ideas and make them want to have sex.  Your kids have gone way past having ideas and they're already doing it.  Not knowing anything about it hasn't stopped them.  They're doing it, and they're getting pregnant, and getting STDs because you're too stupid to give them the tools they need to prevent it.  You're preventing them from knowing enough about it to make an informed decision, and you know what?  It's been proven that kids who take comprehensive sex education classes tend to delay having sex longer than kids who don't.

Anyhow, moving on, later in the evening, I was discussing this with the Husbandly One and the Impertinent Daughter, and she said, "You know, Mom, I'm not surprised at all, because my friends used to pop out with stuff like that all the time.  I'd come ask you about it and you would explain it to me and then I'd go back to school and explain it to my friends.  I mean, I knew they were wrong, but sometimes, I didn't know why, or I didn't know how to explain it.  So I'd go to you, you'd explain it, and then I'd go and explain it to them!"

That sort of boggled me and I laughed and said, "Wow, kiddo, you make it sound like I'm responsible for providing all your friends with sex education."

The Impertinent Daughter snorted as she headed to her room and said, "Duh, Mom, haven't you noticed?  None of my friends are pregnant!!"

Holy cow, she's right.  None of her little circle of female friends are pregnant, and none of the girlfriends of her male friends are pregnant.

That... is pretty stunning.  And you know, all I have done is say things like, "It's easier to prevent a baby than to raise one," and "don't depend on the girl to provide contraception unless you're prepared to be a father," and, "if he doesn't love you enough to wear a condom, then he doesn't love you and he's not worth your time," and "No is a complete sentence all on its own.  No.  Period.  End of story,"and "You have a perfect right to refuse to engage in sex if you're not ready, but it doesn't hurt to develop a good left hook, too."

It's not that hard.  You start when they're old enough to start asking questions.  You tailor it to their age, but you answer their questions.  You don't tell them the stork brings babies or that you go shopping at the hospital.  You tell them it takes two people to make a baby, and the process that goes into it.  You tell them about the changes it makes to a woman's body, and what it takes to grow one, and how it comes out.  And... you tell them what it takes to raise a baby.  Money, time, and patience.  A stable job, a good home, a willingness to love, nurture, teach, lose many, many, many nights of sleep, to sometimes go hungry so your child can eat, to forgo new shoes so your kid can have new shoes, or a band instrument, or piano lessons, or whatever they need.

You talk to them about relationships and what it takes to build them.  What it takes to build a good solid friendship with their buddies, then apply that to a relationship with a girl/boyfriend, a spouse, a lover... you talk about what it takes to learn to live with a completely different person than they're used to living with, sharing books, records, a car, a house, money, or a dog, and you talk about how it all changes when you bring a child into it.

You talk to them about responsibility and respect, for themselves, for others, and you talk to them about how to treat other people.  How to recognize when someone genuinely cares and when they just want to get into someone's pants.  You teach them how to put a condom on themselves, or on someone else.  You teach them about other forms of birth control and how to talk about it with another person.  You teach them about drinking responsibly, about knowing the people they're with and making sure they have a designated sober person in their group.  That they have a signal to let their friends know when they're leaving a party/bar/social scene willingly and when they're in trouble.  That they should have someone they check in with regularly when they go on dates, so that if they miss a check-in, their friend will know something is wrong and will react appropriately.

Doesn't everyone do this?  If not, they should.

Growing, Growing, Too Much Growing!

I cannot keep up with my son's rate of growth.

He's twelve years old, and already looks like a teenager, all arms, legs, and lankiness.  Yesterday morning, while getting ready for school, he came to me and said, "Mom, I'm out of socks."

"Look in your drawer," I said while finishing up lunches, "I know there were four pair in there two days ago."

"There are no socks in my drawer, Mom, I looked!" he insisted.

Grumbling to myself, I went to check and sure enough, lots of underwear, no socks.  So, I headed for my bedroom and the Sock Basket.

In case you're wondering, the Sock Basket is a small laundry basket where we toss all the socks with missing partners.  Sometimes, the missing socks turn up buried in the furniture, hidden under the bookcases or, even more surprisingly, on the shelves of the bookcases.  I have found socks where you expect, jammed into shoes or hidden under beds or the kitchen table.  And I have found socks where you don't expect, like... in a box of music CDs, or on top of the XBox.  And I've found them where you shouldn't expect to, like... between the pages of a book?  Really???  Stuffed into one of the drawers of the china cabinet?   Seriously, guys?? What possible reason would any of you have for stuffing your dirty smelly socks in there???

It's moments like those that I realize my children are strange, strange people.  But I love them anyway.

So, I went to the sock basket, figuring I could at least give the Impossible Son a mis-matched pair of socks, which seems to be all the rage among the teenagers of our small town anyway.  No, really.  They buy pairs of wildly colored or striped or spotted or patterned socks and deliberately mix them up, and wear the resulting mis-matched pairs.  I was dubious at first because, hey, grownup here, raised by parents who kept all our clothes strictly matched and handed down ironclad rules of dressing: 

1.  "No plaids and stripes shall be worn at the same time!!"

2.  "White shoes shall not be worn before Memorial Day nor after Labor Day, unless you are in the Navy and serving in Florida or the Tropics, and you, Young Lady, are not in the Navy!"

3.  "Sandals will not be worn before May, nor after September, I don't care if it's December 25th and it's 90 degrees F and we live in Texas.  It's just Not Done."

4.  "All socks shall be matched and be the same color, and they shall be a color the same as or complimentary to the outfit you are wearing.  And if no matching socks are clean, you shall wear sandals, unless it's before May or after September, in which case, you are Out Of Luck."

However, I got over it, and have seen the mismatched sock thing as a good way to empty out the Sock Basket.  So getting into the spirit of it, I found a mismatched pair for the Impossible Son and handed them over.

Ten seconds later, "Mom... they're too small."

"What do you mean?  We just got you those socks."  

I looked down.  Now, these are what my kids call "footie" socks.  They're the short little socks that barely show over the top of your sneakers, and my son is particularly fond of them.  The sock should come up over the top of his foot and up the back of his heel.  But it doesn't.  It doesn't come up over his heel.  It's too short.

Jaw dropping, I grab another pair of large socks and hand them over.  These are supposed to come up to the ankle.  Except... they don't come up over his heel, either.  So... I grabbed a pair of the Husbandly One's socks, a mismatched pair as well, and they fit.  Kind of.

"How does Papa stand these?" the Impossible Son asks conversationally as he tilts his feet side to side, peering at them dubiously.

"He loves them," I said, putting the other socks back in the basket.  "He says they're very comfortable."

"They're kind of tight around the top," and I look down and sure enough, I see red lines pressing into his skin where the socks end.

I stare at him.  "Honey," I said slowly, "I can't give you any of my socks, because my feet are much smaller than yours.  And I can't give you any of your sister's socks, because her feet are smaller than mine!"

"I know," he said miserably.  "I'll... just wear these."

I had just bought my son socks.  And he had outgrown them in less than two weeks. 

*pauses to hyperventilate*

You know, I thought I was prepared for this.  I thought, because I've already been through the teenaged thing with the Impertinent Daughter, that I at least had an idea of what to expect.  And it sank in.

This... is going to be totally different.  Teenaged boys have a completely different growth rate than girls.  I knew this intellectually, of course.  But I was basically being slapped upside the head with it.  

When the Impertinent Daughter started her growth spurts, she outgrew a brand new pair of shoes in less than an hour.  They had fit just fine in the store, had plenty of wiggle room, and were comfortable.  We put the shoes back in the box, took them to the cash register, bought them, and went home.  She took the shoes out of the box, put them on, took three steps and cried out, "They're too tight!!"

Understand, she's still wearing the same socks she'd worn to try the shoes on.

I knelt in front of her, just like I had in the store, and felt her feet in the shoes, and it felt like her feet were about to burst out of them.  Literally.  I made her take them off and put her old shoes back on.  

She couldn't get them on.

I thought maybe her feet had swollen for... whatever reason feet swell, so I said, "Hey, run around barefoot for now, we'll try them again in the morning."

She couldn't get them on in the morning.

When we went back to the store, her feet had grown a whole size bigger!

So... I thought, when it came to the Impossible Son, hey, I can handle it!

Riiiiiiight.

He's grown nearly four and a half inches since last May.  Which doesn't sound like much, until I tell you that three of them were just in the last two and a half weeks!!  And his hands are now officially bigger than mine, which I know isn't saying much because I have small hands.  His feet are huge right now (think Sora from Kingdom Hearts), and I know that means he's going to grow again, to fit those big feet.

He's going to be taller than me.

I knew that.  I expect that, but it was always in the distant future, when he would be sixteen, seventeen... not now.  Not... like... by next summer, when he'll be thirteen.

Holy Mackinoly... he's going to be thirteen.

*hyperventilates*

He's my youngest child, and all of a sudden, time's passage is rushing by me as I watch his jaw lengthen, his chin lose it's pointy-ness, his face taking on a more adult aspect, and my baby is receding further and further into the past.  I no longer see the cheerful toddler, or the bouncy kid with the big grin, I see the adult that is to come, and whoa!

Then he catches a toad and brings it to show me. And goes flying awkwardly after it when it hops out of his hands.

Yep.  The kid is still there.  And I can still smoke his butt at Smash Brothers.

Hey, it's the little things...

Because they are LOUD...

One of the drawbacks to living in an old house with wooden floors is the fact that it often sounds like I'm raising a herd of young elephants. Clumsy young elephants.

Our house is built on a pier and beam foundation, which means it is built on a series of concrete pillars allowing a crawl space under the house. This is the norm in Southern homes as it allows air circulation under the floor, an essential in keeping cool in a climate that is hot nine months out of the year. And while this is great for keeping the floor cool, as well as allowing access to plumbing and wiring, etc... it's not so great when you have heavy footed children thumping around the house.

By the sound of it, my kids both weigh approximately six tons a piece.

This is great when I want to know where they are, because I can tell just by listening which child is where. And I can tell precisely how close the teenager is to killing her brother just by how much heavier (and faster) those foot stomps get.

This isn't so great, though, when they're horsing around in the living room while waiting for me to get stuff together for our weekly trip to the library. Or do I mean "elephanting" around?

When the Husbandly One and I were first married, we lived in a house built by my father's uncle in 1925. It was small and had a lot of cool doors with cut glass door knobs and each door had a lock with a skeleton key. Well, except the bathroom door. That one had a little knob on the inside that turned like a deadbolt.

Anyhow, it, too, was built on pier and beam and had beautiful wood floors that we loved. We had no children then, just a very large, enthusiastic Labrador Retriever that we loved very dearly, and his herd of cats. And while Max could be loud when chasing his cats around the house, or when they chased him right back, for the most part, it was pretty quiet.

That entire neighborhood was full of old Craftsman houses on pier and beam foundations with similar wood floors. And the house two doors down from us had a family with two small children.

Let me tell you something. I always knew when the mom gave her kids something with a lot of sugar in it. How, you ask? Because I started hearing what sounded like a herd of small horses thundering through a canyon. Seriously. You could hear every single footstep from two houses away when they'd start running through the house. You'd hear resounding booms when they'd jump off the couch and hit the floor, towel capes flapping behind them, and then there would be the rapid fire clatter when they'd race down the hall, chasing imaginary bad guys, or the bangs when they knocked something heavy over in their enthusiasm. And I'd hear the thuds when they'd finally have their sugar crash and pass out for the rest of the afternoon.

I always thought it was funny. Annoying, but funny. And I'd think, "Wow, why doesn't she just shove them out in the backyard like my mom used to do us?"

That always goes through my mind now when I hear my young elephants thumping through the house on their various adventures. I wonder what my neighbors think my kids are doing, and if they can hear it from two or three houses away.

Once, I came back through the back gate after walking to hear, "Thump, thump, thump, THUD, thump, bang, CRASH!" and then my husband bellowing, "Will you two cut it out?? WAIT TILL YOUR MOTHER GETS HOME!!"

I was laughing before I even got in the house. Everyone froze when I came through the door and all I could say was, "Wow, y'all are LOUD."

I suppose I should resign myself to being an elephant herder for now. I'm sure there will come a time when there won't be feet stomping through my house, and I'll miss it. But for now, I find myself wishing for less elephants and more... ninjas.

Ninjas would be seriously cool. Huh. I think I just got a scathingly brilliant idea!!

I'll get back to you when I'm done!!!

Because she liked the sound of the scissors...

What is it about the number four??

Ten years ago, when the Impertinent Daughter was four, she waited until I was busy washing dishes and grabbed the pair of scissors we'd been using for some project or other, and... cut her hair. She chose a chunk on the left side of her face and cut her long, beautiful, waist length hair to her chin. Right there in front. No way of hiding it.

My wild fey little fairy had a large chunk of hair missing.

I don't know who cried harder, me or the Husbandly One. Because... it was a big enough chunk that it couldn't be hidden, or "fixed." She had to have a haircut, and oh, she didn't like it, not one bit, because she enjoyed having her hair braided, and being able to do all kinds of fun things with her hair. We took her to a salon, and she had a cute little chin length pageboy cut that made her look absolutely adorable... but we missed our wild fairy, oh, so much!

Okay, so... cut to last night. The Impossible Son is over his bout with strep and went back to school yesterday, but now I'm fighting it off, and by the time I picked the kids up from school, I was shivering and had a very nasty headache and just wanted to lie down. So I did. Miss Impertinence came in to tell me she was bored, and I remember feeling a little anxious about this because truthfully? A bored Impertinence is NEVER a good thing.

I told her to find something to read, because seriously, we have a house crammed with books that she's barely cracked one fourth of, and she wandered out, shouting something vague over her shoulder, and I sort of dozed off. She came in my room sometime later, but since she didn't say anything to me, I didn't bother opening my eyes. Then THO came home, and I heard some loud talking, and a rather... dumbfounded silence, and then the ominous words, "Does your mother know about this?"

Okay, when my husband, when talking to the kids about me, addresses me as your mother... it's never a good thing.

So, she comes ditty-bopping in and says, "Look, Mum, I cut my own hair!" and turns around so I can see the back of it.

I can quite truthfully say that I completely and intimately understand the term, "shock and awe," now.

Before I lost my battle with the Wall of Fatigue, the back of her short haircut had come down just below the base of her neck. When she turned around to show me her handiwork, it was mostly right at or just above the bottom of her hairline. Where it wasn't skewing madly off at the diagonal. Because she had used a small hand mirror to see the back of her head when she cut it.

Y'all should be proud of me. I'm pretty sure I managed to keep "aghast" out of my expression, though I'm sure the "polite interest" I was aiming for probably looked more like "crazed serial killer." Or "my eyes are about to spontaneously pop out of my head while my eyebrows ascend into my hairline."

"Do you like it?" she asked with that big grin that really means, "please don't kill me or make fun of me."

"Oh, it's... um... um..." I floundered, then finally gave up and said, "Okay, that's gonna have to be fixed." Because there was just no way I was going to be able to adequately describe just how awful it looked.

And when she finally understood what I was saying, she said, "Well, what kind of cut do you think I'll have to get to fix it?"

I said, "Um... okay, think... Emma Watson..."

And I could see panic in her eyes because... she gets mistaken for a boy now with the feminine haircut she had before she'd mangled it, and I knew she was thinking it would only get worse if her hair was that short.

THO drove her into San Marcos after ordering me back to bed (because I'm trying not to come down with strep) to get her hair fixed because... there are no salons open after 5 in our small town. No, seriously, a lot of the businesses here roll up the sidewalks and lock the doors at 5 p.m.

They managed to salvage what she did to her hair and make it cute and girly without going the Emma Watson route. And she's actually taken my advice and today wore a shirt that leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that she is, indeed, a girl. However, I told her that should she continue this trend and decide to cut her own hair when she's 24, she's on her own as I will be officially not responsible for bad haircuts, dubious fashion choices, or shoe fails. They will all be on her ticket!

Now if I could just convince the Impossible Son to get his hair cut...

Because "snarky" runs in the family...

There are many challenges to being a parent, not the least of which are those moments when your child does or says something that somewhere in the back of your mind, there's a niggle telling you that you really should reprimand him or her, but the rest of you is so caught up in either hilarity or admiration that you... just... can't quite manage it. Not without giving yourself away.

Or you don't know whether to scold... or applaud.

Tomorrow is the Impertinent Daughter's high school's homecoming game. For the uninitiated among you, Homecoming (and yes, it's usually capitalized like that) is usually held during football season for one specific game, and is ostensibly the game where the school's alumni is welcomed back. There is often a dance afterwards at the school gym, and a Homecoming Queen and King are elected by the students, along with their court, and theoretically at least, a good time is had by all.

There are also mums. HERE are some examples. Originally, they were these huge, ginormous, sometimes bigger than your head chrysanthemums, with ribbons that had your name, your date's name, the year, your school name, etc. written on them. Plus, there would be ribbons with charms on them, like miniature cowbells meant to jingle sweetly as you walk, little miniature football helmets, footballs, miniature school mascots, and so on. Nowadays, the mums are artificial, mostly silk, and you only get real ones if you're willing to spend megabucks on them.

With me so far?

Okay, so... the boy responsible for THIS got a mutual friend to ask Her Royal Impertinence to Homecoming. This friend, the Wombat (yes, that's his nickname, it's totally my fault, and I'm just lucky he likes it), asked her and was surprised when she said, "Oh, hell, no! no way!"

"Why not?" asked the Wombat, surprised.

She said she laughed and said, "Well, if he'd asked me face to face, instead of getting you to ask me for him, I would have respected him a bit more while I beat him up."

I completely lost it at that point. I was laughing so hard, I nearly wrecked the car!!

Of course, the Responsible Adult inside my brain was saying something ridiculous like, "That was very rude of her, and she should never be encouraged to beat someone up! She probably hurt that poor boy's feelings!!"

*snorts*

Fortunately, the rest of me quickly stifled the quasi-Responsible Adult, and not only died laughing again, but celebrated my daughter's independence and strength of character. She's got several friends who have "dated" boys (they were only in junior high, so "dating" mainly meant they hung around together, held hands, and tried not to look too embarrassed about it), simply because the boy asked them, not because they liked them or anything. Because some of their friends told them that having the boy ask them at all obligated them to say yes.

Excuse me??

No, you don't have to go out with a boy just because he asked you, or because you don't want to hurt his feelings, or because you're "obligated" by his asking. You have as much right to say "No" as you do "Yes." If you don't want to go out with him, say so. If you don't like him... don't go out with him.

*rolls eyes*

Of course, once I calmed down from my laughter, I did offer some motherly advice:

"If you're going to beat him up, dear, please don't do it on the school grounds. It might get you suspended and your father would be inappropriately proud wouldn't be too happy about that."

The Husbandly One and I ordered mums this year. One is from us, and the other is from the Impossible Son. He gave it to her after they got home from school today. When I handed it to him, I said, "Son, you get the honor of being the first boy to give your sister a mum."

He frowned. "Is that important?"

"Yes," I said very solemnly. "It is. And it's very special, because you're her brother. You're her Knight in Shiny Armor, Protector of all Sisterly Honor, and Official Tormentor of all who come to court her. Are you ready to take up your duties, Sir Impossible?"

"I am," he said very solemnly, and then he giggled.

"Go for it," I said, and watched him give her the mum.

She was grumpy when we first got home, so I was honestly worried that she'd snarl at him when he gave it to her, but... she rose to the occasion magnificently. In fact, her whole face lit up, and she got that million megawatt smile going. She looked at it, squeed at the little soccer balls on it, then snagged him for a fierce hug and kiss on top of his fuzzy little head.

It was awesome!

Later, she cornered me in the kitchen and asked, "Mum, what do I tell my friends when they ask me who gave it to me?"

"You tell them your Little Bother gave it to you," I said with a grin, and the concern in her face just melted away.

"Yeah," she said happily. "I'll say, 'my Little Bother gave it to me, stop asking questions!' and walk away."

I laughed. "Just tell them your Little Bother gave it to you because he's cool like that."

Later, my friend, Erin, came by with the mum her papa and I are giving her (Erin was returning a favor) and she was thrilled at the idea of having two mums to wear for Homecoming!! I'll have to take pictures in the morning!

All of it just made me think about what a challenge it is to make sure the little monsterskids we raise today turn out to be adults capable of making decisions and standing up for themselves while not destroying the world around them. It's a tough job. How to you balance teaching them to be polite and considerate of the feelings of others with keeping themselves safe and not letting other people treat them like door mats? How do you teach them the difference between not making a snap judgement about someone and listening to their own intuition? How do you teach them how to be constructively rude?

It's all a work in progress, really, and I'm making it up as I go along. Fortunately, neither the Impertinent Daughter nor the Impossible Son seem to be the worse for wear. At the moment, I'm just happy my girl didn't cave to the pressure of going out with someone she can't stand, just because he asked her.

It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I'm doing something right.

Just to let y'all know...

I'm sorry I haven't been replying to comments. I'm only up for such short periods. Mostly, I'm in bed, dozing, or coughing, depending on which version you prefer. So, I tend to post, then go pass out for a few hours, get up, read, pass out again... you know the routine. So, here's another of my quick bursts.

I got the results of the X-Rays, and so far, it looks clear. Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to crawl back into bed and curl up under the quilts and sleep. Or something.

Oh, and just to make y'all chuckle, the Impossible Son has started, for lack of a better term, styling his hair. He wets it, and carefully combs it to look the way he wants. (I'm trying real hard not to giggle here, because it makes me cough, but it's so FUNNY!) So, this morning, I'm driving the kids to school, I had just dropped off the Impertinent Daughter, and Mr. Manzie says, "Mom, we have to go back home."

"Why?" I said, peeking at him in the kid mirror I keep clipped to the rearview mirror.

"You'll see when we get there."

"No. If we go home, you'll be late. Why do we need to go home?" I'm thinking, did you spill your drink on your pants? Are you going to throw up? Is this going to make me want to cry? Because I really wasn't feeling up to dealing with whatever crisis was imminent, you know?

*Big dramatic sigh* "I need to comb my hair ...again!"

O_o???

"Huh?" was my intelligent reply.

"I need to comb my hair!" he insisted. "It's...messed up!"

I look in the mirror. It looks just like it did when we left. "Nope, sorry, not going home for that, dude. Just fix it with your fingers."

"MOM!! I have to look good for my girlfriends!! DUH!! I can't do it with my fingers!!"

Yes, I almost had an accident while struggling not to burst out laughing, coughing, or otherwise imploding. "Yes, officer, that's right, I ran into the Johnson's house because I was having a coughing fit induced by my struggle not to laugh about my son's hair care issues."

That would go over well. Apparently, the Impossible Son has a harem. This explains why, when I go to pick him up, he's surrounded by a circle of giggling six year old girls. He's very gentlemanly with them, bowing to them when he says goodbye, kissing their hands before he steals their toys... *shakes head*

Okay, I have to go lay down now. Have a good day, y'all!