On pants and poopiness

Growing up, my mom had a habit of calling my brothers and I by the wrong names. Not each other’s names, so much, but by the dogs and cats names. It is understandable, I suppose, all of us being quite dear to her, but also potentially too energetic and noisy. And, lets face it, dogs are a lot like kids. The same training rules apply to both and the same sort of guidance goes out to each “leave it” “good job” “shhhh.” In fact, one of my favorite training books on dogs is actually premised on the parallels between raising a dog and raising a human child.



Which leads me to the reason for this post. If I’m relaxed and not paying much attention to what I’m saying, I’ve been known to call children “Buzz.” Usually, this isn’t really a big deal, because if I’m babysitting, the parents aren’t there to hear it and the kids either don’t notice or just think it is funny. It gets stranger when one of my goofier nicknames for Buzz comes out of my mouth;cute little girls aren’t used to being called things like “Mr. Monkey-breath.”



Well, the other day, I was hanging out with a friend and her 3-year-old


(isn’t she lovely?) While playing a game involving wands and leaping into the air, I called the little girl by a particularly unfortunate nickname of Buzz’s…“Poopy.” And of course, mom was right there when I said this. I was a little worried, but neither mother nor child seemed to notice that I had just called the dear girl by a pretty disgusting name. It turns out that the little one’s Dad refers to her almost exclusively as “PoopyDoopy” or “Poopy.” Thank doG for small favors! Perhaps I should stop calling Buzz such silly things if they are going to come flying out of my mouth while in polite company! They may cut off my donut supply!


On a related note, do you like Buzz’s pants? Long and flowy...


Well, he pooped on his pants one too many times, so he’s got short pants now.


Because Buzz doesn’t have the kind of pants you can launder!


So silly.

Reason #3 Buzz is a supermodel

While Buzz sometimes jumps completely out of the frame in an uncontrolled frenzy of photographic exaltation, most of the time he remembers Tyra Banks advice and just makes small but significant changes from one frame to the next.



A smile in one picture, a kiss in the next.

Buzz is a pretty girl.

Buzz is a pretty girl. People often assume that Buzz is a she and say things like…

“What a happy girl!”


“She is so beautiful!”


“She’s got a lot of energy, huh?”


And usually I don’t correct people, because frankly I don’t care if Buzz is a girl in their eyes, but what I find funny is how EXTREMELY apologetic people get if they figure out that Buzz is a boy. How silly. I don’t care one whit and Buzz…well Buzz says “just don’t call me late for dinner!"


Such a very pretty girl.

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