Warning: if you are offended by certain words, you probably shouldn't read this.
I preface this post with a warning because I have seen the looks of shock on the faces of elderly ladies (and moms and dads whose children NEVER embarrass them.) I, however, am neither elderly (yet) nor unembarrassed.
In fact, lately my son - who will be three in November - has been embarrassing me on a regular basis.
You see, he has become obsessed with (to put it gently) his "manliness."
Not only does he want to get in the shower with his dad, he wants his hair cut short like his dad's. He wants to wear shoes like his dad's. He wants to wear underwear like his dad's (unfortunately, this always ends up messily since he is not yet potty-trained) and he recently decided that in lieu of his organic lavender scented baby wash, he will only consent to bathing if he is allowed to use what he calls "Man Soap."
It's somewhat disconcerting to have a 2-year-old who smells like AXE Excite snuggle you in the rocking chair.
Anyway, I digress. Back to the "manly parts."
At our house, we have never danced around the fact that girls and boys are different and that they have different parts. My kids know the scientific names for their body parts and sometimes they use those names.
Last time we visited my grandmother, who is in her 80s, Jedidiah streaked through the living room after his bath yelling "My penis! My penis! Oh-oh-oh-oh! MY PEEE-NISSS!" His poor great-grandmother nearly fainted dead away and could only throw up her hands and pray, "Lord, help us all!" as I chased him down and wrangled a diaper onto his bare butt.
A few months ago, my oldest daughter was playing with her little brother in the car. They were giving each other high-5s, playing patty-cake, and that sort of thing. Then he wanted to hold her hand. When she looked down at his hand in hers, she said, "Oh, Jeddy-boo, you have the cutest little fingers! They are so cute and squishy! They look just like little teeny wiener-sausages!" (She had read this term in a Junie B. Jones book earlier this year.)
Well. Let's just say that THAT particular term has since burned itself into Jedidiah's vocabulary. He has taken the words "wiener sausage" and turned them into his own personal mantra.
I've tried to play it down and act like it doesn't bother me. I've told the girls not to say it and to not pay attention to him when he says it; I'm hoping he'll get bored and forget about it.
It's been months. And people, I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING AT HIM.
Several weeks ago, I was making dinner and he ran into the kitchen after stripping off all his clothes (he is anti-pants.) He threw his arms in the air, popped his little hips forward, and yelled, "It's wiener sausage time!"
It STILL cracks me up. I just don't know how to deal with this. And I NEED to, because now, it's become more than a noun around here. It's also a verb: "I go outside, Mom? I go ride my bike and WIENER SAUSAGE!?" It's a song: "Wiener sausage, little star, wiener sausage, what you are!" It's a kid-friendly curse word. Can't get his shoes on? "Oh, wiener sausage!" Mad at his sister? "Wiener Sausage on YOU!"
It's even a word to yell in the grocery store check out lane for NO REASON AT ALL other than to mortify his mother and amuse the seven other people in line.
Do you know how hard it is not to laugh at this? He does it at the most random times and in the most unlikely of places. I'm just waiting for the day he hollers it out during prayer at church.
I've even found myself thinking it in place of my own go-to words (like poop, crap, fiddlesticks, etc. Hey, you gotta be careful when you have kids repeating what you say all day long.)
A friend of mine who has twin boys (older than Jed) warned me a long time ago that all little boys are obsessed with their "manly parts." She laughed when I told her about the grocery store situation... turns out that her guys taught an "anatomy lesson" to their Sunday School class. Then she said that it doesn't get any better as they get older.
What? It doesn't?! Wiener sausage!
As my grandma said, Lord help us all.