Dear Readers,
Someday, my blog won’t be all about little boys and their little boy parts.
I promise.
Well, I hope, anyway.
For now, I have two three-year-old boys. And, for three-year-old boys, their boy parts are pretty central to their concept of self. What’s a mom to do?
Sincere apologies,
Beth
…………………………………….
I was half way down the stairs, one three-year-old in hand, when the screaming from the other three-year-old started.
I immediately knew the cause.
Seconds earlier, Cai had unzipped his footed pajamas, and he was in the process of zipping them back up so he could come downstairs with me.
You can see where this is headed, right?
Here’s what I heard:
“Mama, mama, mama, mama. Wait for me! I coming!”
Ziiiiii…
…and what should’ve ended in “…iiipp,” was cut short and ended in cries of pain.
I was already dashing back up the stairs when my eyes confirmed what my ears already knew.
Cai had zipped a bit of his penis into his PJ’s.
I don’t know why, exactly, but I really never expected to have a There’s Something About Mary moment with one of my sons.
So I did what any reasonable mother would do, and I unzipped him.
The injury wasn’t so bad. Honest. Just a little red sore.
But Cai was confused, bewildered and definitely offended on his penis’s behalf.
Some parents offer a cookie or a lollipop in similar situations. It distracts the child, cuts short the crying, and it’s soothing. Not wanting to pass along eating issues, though, we don’t use this approach. Ever ever ever.
So I bundled Cai on my lap and sat right there on the top step to rock him, and he started to cry and to chant.
Sob. Sob. “My penis is NOT OK.” (Emphasis on NOT OK.)
Sob. Sob. “My penis is NOT OK.”
Sob. Sob. “My penis is NOT OK.”
Thus ensued bereft wailing and gnashing of teeth. If we had had rags and ashes to hand, Cai would have donned them.
We spent the next several minutes with the ritual chant resounding throughout the house. And eventually, Cai wound down to the sniffles. Sniffle. “My penis…” shudder… “isnotOK.” Sniffle.
I was able to slow the rocking a bit. We finally moved downstairs to the couch. Twin brother Cael got in a few hugs and awkwardly adorable pats to his brother’s head to express his sympathy.
And then, when Cai was able to speak again some 30 minutes later, he said,
“Mommy?”
“Yes, Cai?”
“Can you kiss it?”
Um.
Huh.
Nope.
Wow.
And just when I thought the situation was improving.
How exactly do you explain to a three-year-old that Mommy’s magical healing kiss powers come with certain use clauses and limitations?
I went with the simplest approach.
“No, Cai Cai. Mommy can’t. Want a cookie?”
21 responses to “There’s Something About Cai”
This has happened to me a couple of times…. Agonising isn’t the word! Made me laugh and cross my legs at the same time.
Oh my goodness, this made me laugh so hard. Your pee fight post, too. I have four boys, 7 and under, and recently found out I’m expecting our fifth (and last!) baby. Your writing is fantastic. thank you.
This made my day! My son is also three and I slung him up on my hip after he was following me around whinning. Well I may have accidently caught his “junk” (this is what my husbant taught him) on my hip bone.
Needless to say he went completely limp while sobbing “momma squished my junk!” repeatedly.
Sigh. Boys, you have to love them;)
Ha! I love it! I had a quite similar incident with my son when he was about the same age (complete with the very same question). Not wanting to teach him to be an emotional eater, I sought a different distraction too. I ended up setting him up with a nice cartoon, something that was a relative rarity in a home with pretty strict rules about screen time. For a while afterward, my screen-obsessed son would claim penis-pain every time the idea of cartoons popped into his head (which was pretty often, as limiting his screen time has never seemed to limit how much he thinks about screen time). For that short time, “my penis hurts” became synonymous with “can I watch cartoons?” I figured I had to nip that in the bud pretty quickly, both because I didn’t want to encourage lying and because other kids would think him pretty weird as he got older if he referenced his penis every time he requested permission to watch TV. Fortunately, discovering his mother was too smart for his lies made relatively short work of that particular quirk, though the story lives on in family lore.
I’m personally more inclined to call it “There’s Something About Mommy.” 😉
Mother of 4 boys, step mom to one here. I think every single one of my kids has asked me to ‘Kiss it, make it better,’ which honestly grosses me out every.single.time. I’ve given kisses on their hands and told them that they can put the kiss on it if they want.
Boys are a trip, and constant blogging gold 🙂
[…] When they are left to their own sense of imagination, Beth from Put down the Urinal Cake can tell you that you may end up finding things in your home that you least expect. It happens to even the best of parents! To further prove how great of a mother she is, this hilarious post proves that she usually cures her kids’ wounds with the “Mommy cure all kiss.” […]
While this incident is well past the three year old mark I have to say this is the reason underwear is always required with zip up pajamas in our house.
I’m on a hunt for blog posts about silly moments with kids and their families for my Intern blog post I’m working on. This post is marked for consideration.
I thought it was very cute. Luckily, I didn’t have to endure that issue of the kissing ordeal with my boys. Hopefully it doesn’t come up with my little girl. 🙂
Oh, but your little girl will someday fall on her behind and yell, “kiss it, ‘mommy”!
Laughed so hard I cried! I have soon to be 4 year old twin girls…and after reading some of your posts, I am glad for that…LOL. We do have an older boy, but being a singleton he doesn’t get into the same kinds of scraps! Your posts bring out my Intention Deficit disorder as I’ve set here for over half and hour reading these!
You seriously had me in tears from laughing so hard..thanks for making my morning altho I do hope that it never happens again to the little fella till at least he’s much older, hopefully never.
Just found your blog OMG I’m the momma of 4 sooooo with you! My son was next door playing one day, he came home a little earlier than expected with a odd look on his face a look of shock really, expressionless with wide eyes… I asked him Jakey what’s wrong??? With the shocked look told us that, we will call him “Sam” decided to put two of those really really strong magnets on either side of his penis and they couldn’t get them off! The mom and grandma tried to pull them apart with pliers but everything snapped together!!!! And he screamed!!!! They are calling the ambulance now! Need less to say the paramedics didn’t want to attempt removing the magnets and took him to the er where they were successfull and “Sam” is fine physically but probably tramatized…
I recently discovered your blog! You are awesome pants. I cried so hard (laughing) at your “How to organize a linen closet post” that I might have died.
Also: this post on my penis is NOT OKAY? HYsterical.
I was a paramedic for ten years, and we got called 3 different times for little boys with their penises stuck in their zippers. NOT FUN for the fellas involved. Poor babies!
I’ve admonished my 3 boys on numerous occasions to always wear underwear and BE CAREFUL when zipping. =)
Welcome, Melissa! So glad you’re here. (And, um, thanks for the paramedic story – it’s kind of a relief that this is common! We’ve since instituted an “undies always” rule. :))
My Mom told the story of when the toilet lid fell down and injured said part. When I asked for her to kiss it she thought for a bit then kissed her fingers and touched it to the injury and said
“all better”. She said she was so very happy I was satisfied with that.
HA! This is a GREAT story. Thanks for sharing, Charlie.
Oh my goodness! Really, what can you say in response to that? I had one of my boys ask me the same thing once, and I think I also used a distraction technique to wiggle my way out of it!
LOL I love how this was your distraction for the weak stomached friend who might have trouble reading your “Turkey Trots” post!
Bahahaha! I’m so glad someone got my funny joke, Terri!
I’m on my way to remove all zippers from the house RIGHT NOW!!! 😉