My boy Sloan, part 2

I thought of a few more Sloan stories that I wanted to document. Perhaps some of my fondest, and most embarrassing, moments, have been with Sloan learning the names of body parts. Let’s start with when he learned the name of his own body part. For all you psychologists out there who say it’s best to teach the proper names for bady parts – umm, do any of you actually have children that you have to take in public? Because my kid went through a phase where he loved to say penis everywhere he went. No matter how hard I tried to get him to understand tht we didn’t use that word in public, he still managed to shout it out at least once a day in public, usually at the grocery store or Target. One day, while he was sitting in the cart at the store he turned his head slightly and looked at me with a devilish grin, then grabbed himself and said, “Oh wook. Heeeere’s my peeeenis!” The two women beside me cracked up. I blushed and tried not to encourage him with laughter. That day I came up with the solution that we would only be allowed to use that word in the bathroom. That worked well until we were in a public bathroom and he yelled it at the top of his lungs. That was the day that we made it a bathroom word only at home. Sheesh.
The next great Sloan story, and most of you have heard this but I have to document it for later so I can humiliate him, was his obsession with women’s chests. Only he didn’t call it a chest, he called it a “nest.” Everywhere we went, he commented on women’s nests. “Ooooh mommy, look. That lady has a huge nest!” Or, “Mommy that lady’s nest was really small.” Or, “Look, that lady has flowers on her nest!” He would point and comment constantly. The only thing that kept this from being entirely mortifying was that usually people didn’t know what he was talking about. While I was horrified at this obsession, Lee found it hilarious. His response the first time I told him about it? “At least he’s not gay!” which he emphasized by thrusting his hands into the air. Apparently there was some concern…

My last story is probably one of my favorite. When we went to the Bahamas this summer we had to make a stopover in Miami. All day, Lee kept telling Sloan that we had to spend th night in Miami before we would get to the Bahamas. When we finally arrived I asked Sloan what he thought of Miami. Looking very serious he said, “No mommy, it’s daddy’s Ami. It’s his Ami.” He thought Lee had been saying we were going to MY-Ami. Those are my favorite Sloan stories so far. I am sure we’ll add many more to those over the years.