Anything Goes

*WARNING* do not read this if you have any illusions that we are a family with tact adn decorum


Dinner the other night was proceeding very well--no spilled milk, no temper tantrums, no tears--it was all going very well. Dinner was winding down and Sarah Katherine was arching her back in her chair. I was trying to give her the "stop doing that glance" so that the conversation was not interrupted. Subtilty is not Sarah Katherine's style--"What are you looking at?" she asks in a not so quiet voice. "Nothing," I respond still trying to maintain decorum. "No really" Sarah Katherine continues and continues and continues. "Moooom, stop looking at me and not telling me why." Caroline is now nervously giggling; Sarah Katherine keeps asking questions, and Christopher, never one to be left out of the fray pipes in, "Why are you looking at her weird like that?" "It's nothing," I say trying to put an end to the conversation. Why oh why did I think that would happen?
"Well," says Caroline, "Mama is looking at Sarah Katherine's boobies because they're bigger than hers but it may just be because she's in her period." I'm speechless; Chris is speechless and thirteen shades of red (that's what happens when you only grow up with brothers.) Christopher, never speechless, says, "How do you know?"--Now you must put on your imagination googles--Christohper is still talking, William is giggling, and Caroline and Sarah Katherine are trying to answer questions as though it's a health class. "It's easy to know," says Caroline, "I heard Mama and SK talking about being in periods." Simultaneously William says, "Is that what all those wrappers are for? I wondered what was in those." Sarah Katherine decides she will go get an example of feminine hygeine to show William so he no longer has to be curious, Chris is still trying to figure out how to extrapolate himself from the table, and Christopher is pretending to be trapped in something hitting against the "ceiling" shouting, "Help I'm in a period and I can't get out."
I have no idea how to prevent this now PG-13 dinner from quickly descending through the ratings--ah, the one tool a mother always has, "if ya'll get up right now, I'll clean the kitchen."
Everyone scattered---