Mommy's Band Aids

After work yesterday, I was finishing up dinner with the boys when I glanced out the back door and saw my Aunt’s yellow lab, Bo in our backyard. Bo is famous for jumping his electronic dog fence, wandering the neighborhood and forcing my Aunt and cousins to look for him for hours upon hours. In order to save them from the protracted dog hunt, I yelled to Chris to grab me a scrap of food and ran outside the door. I chased Bo in my tights, dress and pearls around our neighbor's backyard for a good ten minutes until Chris got my Aunt on her cell and she ran over to grab him. (My neighbors must think I am a loon. Crazy lady in her pearls waving a wad of cheese at a dog... I may get a rep.)

Upon returning inside, I am greeted by a howling Griffin who is screaming “Bo! Bo!” at the top of his lungs while banging on the back door. Griffin appeared to be a tad bit concerned over Bo’s escape and spent the next ten minutes crying full out tears while yelling, “Dog! Bo! Dog! Bo!”

We managed to calm Griffin down and announced to the boys it was time to head upstairs for bedtime. After a brief fight over who gets to use the boys’ bathroom first, Aidan gave in and retreated to the master bathroom to do his business. He came out of the bathroom a minute later clutching my box of tampons and asked me, “Mom, what are these?”

I am mid change from my work clothes and cursed my freakin’ bad luck to be the only parent in the vicinity of this question. How do I explain tampons to a five year old boy? Is there a parenting manual for this? I wish I had researched this ahead of time because I was stumped. I think I managed to come up with something along the lines of a “band aid for mommies,” but from the puzzled look on Aidan’s face, I am not sure if my explanation made any sort of sense at all.

A band aid for mommies? How is this the best explanation I could come up with?

Brennan (Thank you dear Lord) interrupted my rambling explanation to Aidan to demand (once again) that he wear his Buffalo Bills jersey to school tomorrow. My refusal leads to a huge tantrum until we finally compromise on Brennan wearing the Bills jersey to bed instead of his normal pjs. (There is no way he is wearing that jersey out of the house. Our only Bills jersey in a house full of boys and it’s a McGahee jersey! No. Way. In. Hell. But after my attempts at explaining tampons to a five year old, I doubt very much I can reason with a three year old by telling him that his beloved jersey bears the name of a man who hates Buffalo, said some horribly mean things about Buffalo and impregnated like half the city while he lived here.)

By the time my kids are in bed, I am ready to collapse. And it’s only 7:30 pm.