Day 1067 - Unwanted Questions

Every December, I put together some sort of obnoxious parody of your standard holiday newsletter. A few years ago, the premise was that we had Anne Geddes take portraits of the kids, but unbeknownst to me, I hired an Anne Geddes wannabe. So as part of the newsletter, I included a collage of bad photos that were supposedly taken by this fake Anne Geddes. Here are a couple of the photos:










As you can see, I am as sarcastic and weird during the holidays as I am with this blog...

Anyhoo, we had this photo collage on our refrigerator and the kids began to question it. Emma especially seemed confused by the photos.

"Why are we in toilets?"

"Ooo. Dat dangerous. Why are we in dah street?"

"Oh no! We in dah oven!"

"I don't remember doing intensive acrobatic training for a Cirque du Soleil show."

As for Andrew, he just seemed to be excited that he was in all of these weird situations.

"I'm in a TOILET!"

"I driving in the STREET!"

"Oven is HOT!"

"L'exécution en Cirque du Soleil est un rêve viennent vrai!" (Andrew got a hold of my Rosetta Stone DVDs and now speaks fluent French.)

There was never a point in which the kids seemed afraid or bothered by the pictures, but they began to ask so many questions about it that we took it off the refrigerator. I distinctly remember Lisa's expression as she took down the photo collage because her face had the same look of disappointment and disgust that she had on our honeymoon.

To some people, they may think this incident should shine the light on the situation that I need to be more careful of what I do and say around the kids. Honestly, I think I'm pretty good about my behavior around the kids. I've always been conscientious about my language, and I never talk about my porno collection or alcoholism.

What this incident did shine a light on is that I will need to be more careful about what I leave out in the open for the kids to question. Thankfully, the kids don't know how to read or else I would have to edit the past three years of this blog extensively. But they will ask questions about anything they see.

I'm glad our kids are inquisitive and curious about the world around them. I will just have to be a little more diligent about what we leave out in the open for them to question. Which reminds me that I need to ask Lisa to take down the wall of photos of all of her ex-boyfriends. If the kids tell me one more time that Mommy made a bad choice, I'll be forced to take my porn and vodka out in the open.