Somewhere, up in heaven, my dad and papa have fallen off of their celestial bar stools and are laughing their butts off. Why? Because they sent us Lily. Lily, who is one Wacka, Wacka short of Fozzie bear. Lily, who has started channelling Beevus and/or Butthead. Lily who makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
Lily is going through what I refer to as a growth spurt of the mind. She asks at least 20 whys a day. She will not be satisfied with my tried and true strategies of a silly answer and then Woodie Gurthie's Why Song. She wants her answers "for real, for true." She wants a google search and Discovery channel to back you up. She is quiet honestly simultaneously thrilling and exhausting. She is running around explaining how an asteroid will kill the Earth (thanks Daddy) and why it is better to let our pumpkin decompose outside so it doesn't stink.
When she isn't a little scientist, she's a teenage boy. "Do you smell my stink?" she bellows from the bathroom. "I hold your family responsible for that gene." replies her embarrassed father. The more uncomfortable it makes us, the more likely Lily will do it or say it. She was placed here to remove the proverbial stick from our asses.
Last week I was reading to her from the most beautiful book about babies. You could tell this illustrator was a mommy. It was full of lovely drawings of parents doing what real parents do; parents passed out next to a cradle rocking it, daddies holding babies on their knees and gazing at them, and my favorite: a mother nursing in a rocking chair holding a book, head rolled back in exhaustion. The baby had her shirt clutched in his hand in that sweet gesture that I miss so much. The picture was enough to make me want to start it all over again, until:
"She's not feeding that baby! What's going on there?!" First I wondered why the hell I suffered through a year in a half of breast feeding when she doesn't even remember it. Then I started to explain (scientifically of course) about breast feeding. I got no further than breast when Lily stated to snort "Breast is a funny word." I explain that breast is a part of our body that is normal and plunge forth with my explanation. I am all ready for a bizarre response. When I explained breast feeding to four year old Caroline, she first asked why I didn't just give her milk from the fridge. After I explained that her milk came from my breast she looked at me in awe and asked how it opened up (yes folks, I'm a cooler).
After my explanation, Lily looked puzzled for a minute and then her face clouded over in horror. "You mean I drank BLOOD!?" Of course this makes sense in Lily world, she only knows of one liquid that comes from people (besides pee) and that's blood. I assured her that she wasn't a vampire and that mommies could make milk. Then I explained about cows and baby cows, mommy dogs and puppies etc. As she snuggled down under the covers she looked up at me with an angelic smile "Mom? Breast is still a funny word." As I told her to go to sleep and kissed her sweet little head, she whispered "Guess what Mom? Poop is funny, too."
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