Vomit 2, Bruising 0

Emily is wearing a straw-and-fabric-blossom lei around her neck.

“Come here, Timmy, and you can wear it, too!” She offers him the other end. He tips his head forward. She tips hers, too, and lifts the other end of the necklace. The sharing is laudable, but that loop just isn’t that long. I foresee disaster.

“Emily, Timmy. I don’t think that’s a very good idea. If you both wear it at the same time, you will bonk heads and fall down.”

They stare up at me. Expressions blank. Either they don’t get it, or…

“Maybe that’s what they want,” the Husband pipes up. (He’s working from home quite a bit these days. I’m not minding the continuing bus strike so much, I confess.) “Maybe that sounds like a good time to them.”

“Yeah!” Timmy has no idea what was just said, but he recognizes important words when he hears them. “It’s a good time!”

Woo.hoo.

And really, who knows? You’ll recall the topics of rivetting attention yesterday were vomit and death, with a side of poverty. Vomit was the focus of most of their attention, undivert-able. Vomitting in the night, vomitting in the toilet, vomitting in a bowl, on sheets, on the carpet, on DADDY! (Emily’s house apparently saw some GOOD TIMES over the Christmas break.) The colour of vomit, the smell of vomit. Your teeth hurt just before it comes up, did you know that?

And it really, really hurts when it comes out your nose. Especially when there are carrots in it.

(Yeah, well, I didn’t really need to think about that either, and what choice did I have?)

In fact, it wasn’t me so much as my husband who bore the brunt of it. He and his laptop, sitting at the dining table, diligently creating a comparison chart for a negotiation he’s conducting. (Yes, he really does WORK from home when he works from home.) And all around him, the chatter swirled. Vomit and death, death and vomit. And more vomit. (He says he gets much more work done at home than in the office. His powers of focus and concentration are really impressive.)

This morning, fresh start, fresh conversation. The children chatter about snow and breakfast and dryers and boots. Grandmas and grandpas, Cinderella and the colour pink and noodles with cheese. All sorts of cheerful, everyday stuff.

Until, that is, Husband enters the kitchen to prepare his morning capuccino. The hissing and humming draw the tots like moths to a flame. All other activities and conversations cease. They pull close and peer up, eyes round.

And the conversation starts. Two room away, sitting on the couch, I can hear Emily’s voice: “… bowl… baffroom…bowl… sheets…”, and I call down the length of the house.

“Is that child talking about vomit again?”

The husbands voice is rueful. “Yes.”

“You sure do bring that out in them, don’t you?”

We hit it together. “So to speak.”

So really: If vomit is so utterly fascinating, then maybe head-bonking is even better: Vomit is explosive and goopy and all, but big black-and-blue goose-eggs? The Epitomy of Cool.

They’re three and a half. Who knows?

Barf and death and baby brothers: the world according to Emily

Emily chatters. Chatters and talks and babbles and discourses. Explains and complains and explicates and expounds. Ceaselessly. Well, except when she sleeps, thumb planted firmly in her mouth.

But apart from that? Oh, how the words flow.

For richer:
“Did you have a Christmas at your house, Anna? You did? That’s good. So did I. That’s because we are rich, and we have lots of money for special Christmas things.”

For poorer:
“Some people doesn’t has lots of money for Christmas. Like the little piggies. One little piggie was going to build a house out of straw, but that was a dangerous house for the Big Bad Wolf to blow down, and he bought it because he was poor and didn’t have no money for a strong house.”

In sickness:
“And when I frow up inna night, my mummy brings a bowl so I can get it all inna bowl and not inna bed. And she takes the frow-up and frows it inna toy-yet.”

And in health:
“My baby bruzza didn’t frow up yet. My mummy has a bowl in his room, just in case, but he isn’t frowing up in it yet.”

To love and to cherish:
“And that is good, because I don’t want my poor baby bruzza to have to frow up like I did because he is just a baby.”

Till death do us part:
“When you gets very old and you gets sick and you will die and be gone forever. And then sometimes that makes the other people sad, because they will miss you lots and lots and lots and it’s okay to cry if you’re missing someone, but they are not sad and hurting any more.”

I wasn’t even at a wedding today, but I got all teary anyway.

Out of the Mouths of Toddlers

This is what passes for chit-chat around here…

“Anna, Anna, you’re not listening to me. I climbed the rainbow!”
“I climbed the rainbow and I tumbled down and I cried.”
“I’m a boy.” [Timmy said that. He’d be right.]
“I’m a girl. Sometimes I be Charlie when I’m a boy, and sometimes I be Lola. And sometimes you be Charlie.”
“And sometimes I be in a river and I go underwater.”
“And sometimes you pop up.”
“I went to a circus-festival, and it had happy carrots in it, with controls and I didn’t like it. I just liked the carrot ones.”
(The above was all one conversation, diligently transcribed verbatim. There were no pauses when the conversation did a 180 into sur-reality, just one steady stream of chatter.)

While eating lunch:
“I’m a cucumber baby.”
“I’m a mummy.”
“Awww, my baaybeee. Mwah!”
“Baby, be careful on the swing! Be careful on the swing, says mummy!”
“Look, I’m a half-moon!”
(Guess what our vegetable was?)

“Ha! You have a stinky-bum. You’re stinky!”
“I’m not stinky!”
“But your bum is stinky.”
“I’m not stinky.”
“I smell your bum.”
“I have a poop in me, and it will come out soon.”
“I needa go pee.”
“I need to go, too.”

Which, of course, leads to a conversation about undergarments.
“I have unnerwears.”
“No, you have panties.”
“I have unnerwears and that is panties, too.”
“I have tighty-whiteys.”
“And tighty-whiteys is unnerwear for boys.”

And, staring into the potty, after their mission is accomplished:
“Look! You made a rainbow!”
(Who couldn’t check, after that? No disgusting myriad of colour, thank heavens, just a tidy, reeking curve. But of course! Anyone who sees an arc of sh poo immediately thinks of the beauteous wash of glowing colour that is ‘rainbow’…)

“Glory to the newborn king. Born the new king at the whole world. AH-men!”
“Helpful your newborn king is very better and flatter.”
“AH-men!”