I Married An Alien and Other Odd Things

So, if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I married a Frenchman. We were living in the US at the time, so this means he was an alien. Of course, now that we're living in France, that would make me the alien. I feel like it sometimes, too. But, we're not here to talk about me. We're talking about HIM being the alien creature. It really must be true that he's an alien, otherwise, why would I have the urge to knit him a three-armed sweater? Yeah, three-legged pants you could understand, but why a three-armed sweater, right? Well, it just so happens that I appear to have been smokin' something pretty harsh when I knit that first arm, and while knitting the second I've realized my mistakes in the side increases. Oops. Now I understand why I seemed to only get 15 of the 22 increase rows I was supposed to. Yeah, I did realize it while knitting that first sleeve, but I thought maybe I could live with it (I was almost to the end, anyway). But, in doing this second sleeve, I'm thinking I'd be better off knitting the first one over again - hence, the third sleeve. They knit up pretty quickly, and I'm really determined to make this a beautiful sweater for him to wear for a long time to come (let's hope). So, I'll just think of him as an extra-terrestrial and knit a third sleeve as if it were totally normal to do so (forget the fact that I'll be frogging that first one in order to do it).

Now on to the other odd things...

The other day, my son's preschool teacher was absent. That means the other teacher gets to have way too many children in her class. I don't like to do that to them or my son, so I brought him to the grocery store with me. Now, this little boy of mine - sweet as can be, of course - is totally potty-trained in the morning, because that allows him to go to school. The after school hours, though, are different story all together. Knowing he can go all morning without a screw-up, I didn't head back home for a change of clothes before driving to the store. I figured if I just got him to the store restroom before shopping... I even shared this plan with him. He apparently, didn't see the logic. We got as far as the shopping carts outside the store before I heard, "uh oh." So, we headed back to the car to change him into the spare diaper that happened to be lying around in the car (pays to be disorganized, I swear). He didn't want to put the wet jeans back on (can't say that I blame him), so I plopped him inside the cart with just a diaper on the bottom. He was looking pretty hot with his cool weather clothes on top and the cheapest-diaper-you-can-buy on bottom (what can I say, we're on a budget, and the cloth diapers irritate his highness' fanny).

So, off we go, happily rolling along with our cart. Somewhere during our shopping adventure, he managed to rip a gaping hole in the back of the afore-mentioned cheapo diaper. No big deal. With him in the cart under a pile of groceries, nobody'll notice the cotton hanging out, right? We finish up our expedition and are waiting in line while chatting with the nice older couple behind us (kids are pretty much the only thing that can bring the French to exchange pleasantries at the checkout stand). This is when our little lambchop stands up to help me unload the cart onto the conveyor belt. THIS is when I notice the... ummm... how can I put this tactfully... uhhh, yeah, not possible. Well, this is when I notice the poo that's almost leaking out of the right side of his diaper. So, we've got the tear on the left and the poo on the right. We won't even talk about the smell these poor older folks were assaulted with, and he's happily passing me groceries like there's nothing wrong. At one point, he even lobs a can of condensed milk onto the conveyor belt, he's having so much fun. A few minutes later we're reloading the cart - a task he felt the need to help out with as well. The means he needs to be outside the cart, right? So, he helps and helps and helps, and since the can-lobbing when so smoothly on the other end of the conveyor belt, he decides to try it with a glass bottle of juice. From about a foot and a half away from the cart. This caused both the cashier and me to take in huge gasps of air and hold them in anticipation of the sound of breaking glass. Didn't happen, though. The boys got talent. I'll give him that much. The bottle even slid smoothly in between two large grocery bags, avoiding damaging any of the more fragile goods on top.

At this point, I'm in a pretty big hurry to get out of the vicinity before some major disaster takes place. So, I pay and we head on out of there. Somehow, with all the groceries organized in their bags, there's no longer any room for the lambchop, so he walks next to the cart like a good little boy. The good-little-boy image is a bit hard to maintain, though when you're waddling with a full/torn diaper dangling between your legs. Or, maybe I'm the one who would have trouble maintaining good-little-mommy status in the eyes of the other shoppers. Yeah, I guess that'd be it.

And, one last funny tidbit to distract you from the continuing lack of knitting pictures...

A quote from Lambchop #2:

While walking to pick up his sister at school this afternoon (he only goes in the morning), he saw a man in front of us on his way to get his own children. I've seen the guy before and been surprised at his height. At a little under 5'4", I'm no towering Amazon woman, but this man is at least 6 inches shorter than I am - a fact that, apparently, did not go unnoticed by my boy (at least he's observant). So, in his I-never-moderate-my-voice toddler manner, he asked, "What's the little boy?" Mortified, I shushed him as discreetly as possible and told him it wasn't a boy. Then, he loudly asked, "What's that little daddy?" Several times. I'm kind of hoping the guys also hard-of-hearing, because, even though he may be used to it, I don't want to be the one really driving the fact home for him, you know?

Yep, these are the joys of parenting. If you don't have any kids of your own, you really just don't know what you're missing out on.

Well, I actually tried uploading a picture for this post, just so you wouldn't have to look at all these words with nothing to keep you here, but either Blogger or my ISP wouldn't allow it. Maybe some other time...