Boo-boo report

How cute is it that Daycare provides a Boo-Boo Report?? Since we're in the Big Kids' Room now, walking and talking and climbing and all, we of course have this danger. I love it. The teacher wrote, "We applied ice and gave AJ lots of love and he didn't even cry, but a small bruise might appear." He is becoming quite the little boy, with scrapes on his knees from toddling along the driveway, mosquito bites on his face because when he's outside, he's much too busy to bother shooing the bugs away, and now this lovely bruise/scratch in the middle of his forehead. It's very Harry Potter, actually. He was fighting off He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, I guess. The best part is his 1-year portrait is supposed to be taken tomorrow. Lovely. Guess we'll be calling the studio today to reschedule! If I'm paying good money, I want him to be Porcelain.

The other night, he was taking his bath. Bathtime at our household is mostly an exercise in distraction. AJ does not like, nor has he ever liked, water in his face. He gets very upset. We're still hopeful that one day he'll figure out that it's fun -- and we're getting a few signs of that, like when he "tastes" the water now, smacking his lips, instead of screaming his head off. But as a rule, bathtime is not our favorite time. We get in, we get clean, we play as much as we can stand, and we're done. So this last bath, we were playing the body parts game. He knows his tongue, eyes, hair, feet, and is about to figure out his nose. We were trying out new parts... where's your belly button? Arm? Chin? Knees... when Daddy got the bright idea to ask, "AJ, where's your pee-pee?" (Leave it to a man to be sure and remember the MOST IMPORTANT body part of all.) Honestly, it was as if he looked back at us and said, "This thing has a NAME?" Of course, it is a pretty obvious part, easy-to-access and all. Well, ACCESS IT, he did, and then couldn't STOP accessing it. "HOW CURIOUS!" he must have been thinking to himself. Daddy and Mommy had the conversation about, "Should we call it by its actual name? ...Nah, "p*nis" just sounds too strange to say aloud all the time, right? Right. Pee-pee is an easier word for kids to grasp (so to speak)... etc..." while AJ continued "learning" it. He even looked up and sounded it out, grinning at us: "Puh-puh." As I said, the Art of Distraction comes in handy during the bath. We finally succeeded. Finally. "Hey, look, AJ, your BOAT! There's Captain Eddie! WOW, isn't that fun!?" And, "peek-a-boo! Hey! Look over here...PEEK-A-BOOOO!!" But it was no easy feat. "FEET! AJ, where are your FEET?!"

A wet riot, I tell you. Mommy had tears in her eyes from laughing, and Daddy just grinned and shook his head, guilty of starting this, and unable to verbalize the concept, this father-son thing, this brotherhood of man.