August 7, 2009

Casper, the REALLY Friendly Ghost and Other Conversational Tidbits


I tucked Tristan into bed and he was fussy. He kept asking to hug me, but what he really wanted was for me to hug him. After hugging him about five times I finally got a stuffed toy for him to cuddle while he was falling asleep.

I just grabbed one, not really paying attention to what I was getting in the dim light. It was a stuffed ghost that Julius got from the anaesthesiologist once when he was having surgery around Halloween. Predictably his name is Casper.

So, I tucked Casper in with Tristan and he squeezed him tight and made that cute little "happy noise" that I love. Then he got a puzzled look on his face and said, "Casper have penis??"

I said, "Ummm... huh?"

He pulled Casper out from under the covers and showed me the part of Casper that was sticking out at the bottom. It's the trailing tail of the ghost.

He asked again, "Casper have penis??"

I said, "No, definitely not. Casper is a ghost." I realized moments later that was totally the wrong answer when he sits straight up in bed with a wild look in his eye.

"Casper ghost bad boy!"

"No, no," I reassured him. "Casper is a good boy ghost."

"Casper bad boy..." And then he poked him right in the eye. Because I guess that's what you do when you have a bad boy ghost in your bed.

* * *

Julius was watching a plastic triceratops trudge slowly across the top of the coffee table.

"Mom, can you believe this thing still works? We haven't had to change the batteries even one time!"

I answer, "Amazing, yes."

Tristan slides off the couch and knocks the dinosaur off the table. It falls to the ground and its head pops off and rolls across the floor.

Julius bellows, "Tristan, stop! You're ruining it. That's an ANTIQUE! It's like two years old!"

I'd hate to hear what he calls his dad and I.

* * *

I refer to Julius as my "unpaid summer intern". Mostly what he does when he's staying at the office is go fetch stuff off the copier, check the mail and use up office supplies unnecessarily.

His favorite place to sit is behind me in my chair. Anyone who knows how big my butt is will not believe that this is possible, but it is. I generally sit far forward in the chair because I'm short and sometimes my feet don't go all the way to the ground. So he wedges himself in the gap between me and the back of the chair.

Many times it's inconvenient and sometimes annoying, but several times I've talked him into "fixing" my hair and scratching my back which is nice. Yesterday my grandfather came in and asked what that was behind me and I said, "A mole. I really need to get to the dermatologist and have it removed."

While I was hunched over working on a problem, Julius sat quietly back there and after a while said, "Mom, I have to ask you a question."

"Okay, go ahead."

"How do squirrels kiss?"

I wasn't sure I heard it right. "How do squirrels kiss?"

"Mmmhmm."

The sinking feeling started settling in, but I plowed ahead anyway saying, "Squirrels don't kiss..."

"Well, then how do they have babies?"

Just then the phone rang and, honestly, I have never been so happy to answer a phone call in my life.


20 comments:

  1. Oh!! Your life! You crack me up!

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  2. LMAO Wendy! I guess I'm an antique antique :p LOVED the squirrel question...did he re-ask once you were off the phone?

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  3. I wanted to name Elijah Augustus and call him Baby Gus....I think of that everytime I come to your blog and read about 'Julius'...
    Random, I guess.

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  4. Seriously you make me want to have another boy just so I'll have even half the awesome stories you have!

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  5. Wow... so what's with the Freudian aversion to beings without penises?

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  6. Your children have said the word "penis" more times than I have in my entire life!

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  7. Once I took my daughter to the gyno- she was three and we won't talk about how disturbing it is that I took her- I was a single mother at the time. This old lady that is somewhat related to us badgered me to death wanting me to tell her that I was there because I was pregnant- which I wasn't she's just nosy. When the nurse opened the door and said my name my daughter yelled, "That is you, You have a sick flitterbug!" As I stood up I announced to the snickering patients, "It's just a yearly exam- not pregnant- not diseased."

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  8. Wendy, you should go check out Momo Fali's blog. Go back a bit in her postings, she's talking about her dogs right now....
    http://momo-fali.blogspot.com/

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  9. Squirrels don't have to kiss. They just shake hands to seal the deal. Then they trade acorns and BAM!--baby!

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  10. Sometimes I'm SO glad I don't have children! LOL

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  11. LMAO! outta da mouths of babes...;)

    it's funny, some kids ask those questions, and some don't...i am STILL waiting for Girlchild to ask that heart-stopping "where do babies come from?" which all of my other kids had asked by the age of 3. i've about given up...she's now 12! according to my daughter, girlchild's mother, GC asked her, and then said of the answer "that's the most disgusting thing i've ever heard!" sheesh. i get all the BORING questions. like what's for dinner. ;)

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  12. I love it! When my daughter was three (and right after her baby brother was born) we were watching 'Dumbo' and she asked "Do baby boy elephants have a penis?". Trying to be mature and say the correct thing, I told her "yes, a baby boy elephant has a penis". She proceeded to run upstairs, get her stuffed Dumbo, and prove that baby boy elephants do not have any reproductive equipment. What could I say? "I guess you're right Rebecca, they don't". It then became her favorite grocery store question to strangers for about a monthh.

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  13. brouhaha Wendy... your content is so interesting that i can't get my gaze off your blog... your 3 in one casper's antique penis make's the squirrels pregnant ! brouhaha

    cheers

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  14. Just give me a minute to stop laughing!

    Kids are a never ending source of joy--and great blogging material!

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  15. I used to love going to my grandfather's office, where my mother and my aunt worked, and using up office supplies needlessly. That's every kid's dream.

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  16. To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a friendly ghost is just a friendly ghost..."

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  17. I haven't had the pleasure of explaining birth yet to my daughter, right now God is the magic creator of everything, I did have to explain to her how her half-sister has two mommies.

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  18. Glad I'm not the only one trying to get hair-fixuns and back scratches from the kids. It's pathetic how much I beg.

    That picture of Casper cracked me up.

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