An Interesting Fact about the Vagina

Margot and Jane were in the bathtub when I heard Margot solemnly intone, in a sort of thoughtful-documentary-movie-narrator voice: "The vagina can hold more water than a university. " I looked over to see her carefully pouring water into an upside down baby doll that had -- for some totally incomprehensible reason -- a perfectly round hole smack in the middle of her nether-regions.

I immediately reported this strange statement to Don, who suggested that perhaps Margot was confusing "university" with "uterus." Putting aside the fact that I think a vagina would actually hold less water than a uterus, I conceded that he might be onto something. I returned to the bathroom and had the following conversation with Margot:

Me: "Hey, Margot. Do you remember the name of the body part where the baby lives when it is growing inside its mommy?"

Margot: "Uh-huh."

Me: "Well, what is it?"

Margot: "Um . . . museum?"

Bad Powder

Claire has recently had a series of, shall we say, "challenging" days at school. The primary problem is her unapologetic refusal to follow a wide variety of instructions given by her kindergarten teacher, Ms. Cable. From what we've been able to gather, her rationale for this behavior seems to be that the sheer unreasonableness of Ms. Cable's requests -- all of them -- literally makes it impossible for Claire to comply.

Yesterday, however, her teacher reported that she had a terrific day. Lindsay, our own personal Super Nanny, praised Claire for working so hard to behave well -- and unwittingly discovered the truth behind Claire's conduct. The conversation went as follows:

Lindsay: ''Claire, I'm so proud that you had a good day today, because I know that yesterday was tough.''

Claire ''I had to have a good day. I ran out of bad powder.''

Bad Mother Incident #257

The other day I dropped Claire and Margot off at school a few minutes before the bell rang to signal the opening of the front doors. Normally go inside with them to their classrooms, but we've been working on independence skills -- we're trying to sometimes let them make the 60 second walk from the front door to their rooms without one of us in attendance. As I dropped them off, I said in my best enthusiastic mommy voice, "The bell is going to ring in a few minutes -- you need to go into school by yourselves like big girls today!"

Later that morning I received a voicemail from my friend Susan (who, being a better parent than I am), had not abandon her own kids at drop off but had stayed to escort them to their classes. She advised that Margot had absolutely refused to go into the building, and that Susan and another friend of our (also named Susan) had chased Margot around outside, pleading with her to go in - to no avail. The second Susan (who is also a more conscientious mother than I am) was particularly alarmed about the possibility of Margot leaving the school grounds altogether and meeting with some kind of foul play. For reasons known only to her, Margot finally agreed to enter the building, but only after the Susans had gone in first.

That afternoon, Margot and I had a conversation about this incident, and I indicated my displeasure with her conduct. She earnestly explained that the reason she would not go into school "with a grown-up" because she needed to go into school by herself.

Which, of course, was exactly what I had instructed her to do.