Bodily Parts & Functions

The first bodily function we will talk about is chewing....chomping....biting....eating. Baby Mouse does all these things, except eating, in abundance. On the 4th, Miss Mouse and I drove to see the fireworks display in town; we left Baby Mouse at home asleep with Daddy on BabyWatch. On the way back, Miss Mouse commented that "Baby Mouse could not come with to see the fireworks. She would have eaten them." Ugh! We need to get through this teething phase!

Talking is the next function on our agenda. Baby Mouse is talking a lot these days! In 24 hours last week she learned "meat" (a favorite of her sister's), "ham", "water", "foot", "cheese", "pizza", "Laura", "Grandpa Bob" - really anything we say these days and ask her to say, she will repeat!

The following tales are not for the queasy. If you are easily queasy, stop now; you will avoid queasiness, but also hilarity. Please consider that your fair warning. I will assume that continued reading is your confirmation of informed consent (I was a counselor in another life...).

Saturday returned us to the park in my hometown. One week after my sister and brother-in-law's beautiful wedding celebration there, our neighbor celebrated his 50th birthday. It was another perfect night! Perfect enough for Baby Mouse to happily run circles around our picnic table while we all ate without fear of her blowing away in a gale or being carried off by viking mosquitoes. At one point, Baby Mouse squatted low and put on her "thinking face". Uncle Jon asked if that position meant what he thought it did.....indeed.

Well, on such a perfect night, what mom would need to find an indoor area in which to change her toddler? No one up there would be offended by (or even notice!) a small girl getting a diaper change in the shade of the picnic table, right? The Change was proceeding as planned, same old, same old....until Miss Mouse glanced down and excitedly informed Grammy and the guest-of-honor's-wife Kathy that "Baby Mouse's poop is little balls! They are just in little, tiny balls! Just like this size (holding up her hands in a circle)." My sweet Miss Mouse. Maybe a lot of children might have said that to "gross out" the guests or to intentionally be inappropriate; not my Miss Mouse, nope not that one. She has always been intensely interested in her sister but also in bodily functions. We just returned a book on the digestive system to the library. In reading it (over and over and over and over) we learned how food progresses through the esophagus to the stomach where it is turned into a thick paste....should I continue? I'll spare the details, but I think that suffices to explain my Miss Mouse's interest in bodily functions. Now we just have to work on dinner-table-conversation-topics which we can hopefully do without inducing any shame about the non-dinner-table-conversation-topics such as little sister's dirty diaper shapes.

Fast forward two hours Saturday night, and we were attending the annual Threshing Bee talent show. I happen to love, love this talent show for two big reasons, but those need to be saved for another blog post. Anyway, the floor in the building where it is held is sand. Put together sand and tots and use your imagination. Yes, we had sand being piled on my blue jeans, sand being piled on our chairs, under our feet, on our shoes, sand being dumped in each other's hair....the line was drawn when Baby Mouse decided shoving sand in her eye might be a fun idea. Out we went to ride the little kiddie train. The sand sisters under control we headed back in to catch the end of the talent show; again the sand was piled, picked up, flattened, piled again - not a problem. Baby Mouse was quite enjoying herself what with being able to be in the presence of music and be dirty at the same time. Both girls were quietly playing in between the chair rows at our feet when, suddenly, Baby Mouse noticed the man in front of us who had leaned over with his elbows on his knees...and revealed a certain amount of skin.

Now, Miss Mouse would have observed this skin and been on her merry way.

Baby Mouse pointed and stated quite clearly, "Butt!", followed by "Butt! Butt! Butt!". I couldn't hardly breathe for laughing so hard. Thankfully, Grammy had the presence of mind to capture the verbal Mouse after the second series of 'body labeling' because we were both quite fearful that she was actually going to poke said body part. Miss Mouse at this point got quite worried. Mommy and Grammy both had tears streaming down our faces, and Miss Mouse didn't really see anything funny about the fact that Baby Mouse had pointed out a body part. It was kind Miss Mouse who taught Baby Mouse the word in the first place, and it was used as a label for what her diaper covers. My girls are far from perfect (ask our poor friends who stayed at the farm after the big wedding - two screaming Mice ran up and down the hallways until midnight), but for whatever reason, they just don't understand the concept of using these bodily functions or body parts as a way to be funny or rude yet. Miss Mouse in the previous example was truly just informing Grammy, and Baby Mouse was delighted to be able to label a body part.