Obey Your Poo-poo Thirst

The family cookoff went relatively well on Saturday night with no monstrous news to report. Unless you count my cousin’s giant baby filled stomach, which I could easily describe as monstrous.

To note:

• The broccoli soup recipe is too salty.
• The pizza lasagna tastes better if you use spicy sausage.
• Cornflake meatloaf is now the gold standard for any future consumed meatloaves.
• Coco-cola cake tastes no different than chocolate cake.
• There was no snapping turtle. I haven’t a clue where to get one. Safeway, Giant and Whole Foods were of no help.

The cousins’ babies were invited to all of this as well and while I feared some major destruction/dog ear pulling, nothing went wrong. I was concerned that the vintage Vader mask in the basement might cause some tears, but it turns out that the Sith Lord is not considered a villain in the minds of today’s 4-7 year olds and they lurv him. The children were in fact more delighted with it than they were with the Peter Pan or Muppet VHS tapes I hoped to deploy against them. The loudest giggles and screams came from the basement as this real-life bobble head doll came teetering up the stairs, one step at a time.


That Phantom Menace bullshit would have been so much better if that punk Jake Lloyd had been wearing the mask from the begining. And an argyle sweater.

The idea of re-child proofing our house was something I briefly considered before they arrived but it’s small enough that we could keep an eye or ear on everyone without too much to worry. (Plus, when we were doing the home inspection before moving in, I unintentionally ripped most of the kitchen cupboards’ childproof devices out of the walls because I couldn’t work them.) This poster caused the most consternation from the youngest one and I guess it could be little scary for a 4-year-old.

What I hadn’t considered was whether or not some of things I considered harmless would pose a threat to my cousin’s parenting decisions. Like the video game system. The 7 year old was enthralled with it, even though it wasn’t even on. He carried the wireless controller around for several minutes, trying to play with it, much to the chagrin of his father. I should have realized this considering video games have never been allowed among any of my immediate family. A used, inherited Game Cube is the first system I’ve own and that was in a so far failed attempt to improve my Madden skillz.

Something else I hadn’t considered was that my cousin has yet to introduce his children to soft drinks. A six pack of Sprite on the kitchen counter led to my favorite exchange of the night.

L’il Boy pointing at Sprite: Daddy, what’s that? Can I have that?
Cousin: Uh… that’s, uh, poo-poo water. You don’t want that.
L’il boy: Poo-poo water?
Cousin: Yes. And it tastes very bad.

Poo-poo water. Awesome.