Let's Talk About Sex...

I had a list, when I became a parent.  I'm sure many of us did.  You know the one.  The "I'll Never Do It Like My Parent's Did It" list:

-I'll never wear sweatpants to drop my kids off at school.
-I'll never make healthy food for dinner when my kids have friends over.
-I'll never make my kids go to bed at a reasonable hour on a Friday night.

Things like that.

It's one of my favorite things to do and has become a regular 10 minute break with the boys every few days to watch movie trailers.  We go to apple and check out the latest releases.  Actually, we usually watch the same old trailers over and over until we have them memorized and can act them out.  Even if we never plan to attend the movie itself.  I stick to the kid ones, but sometimes an adult one will catch our eye and occasionally I'll risk it.  The boys are used to me saying no about certain ones.  "Too much adult humor mom?"  Up until recently I've generally assumed that most of the innuendo, etc. that they do occasionally encounter goes straight over their head.  Apparently not so much.

The other day we were watching one that ended up having too much 'adult humor'.  So I kind of sucked air when B asked me a few minutes later, "Mom?  What's 'sacs'?"  I did what any evolved and totally confident mother would do.  I said, "You know, B.  Like a sack that you put things in.  Grocery sacks.  That kind of thing.  I think that's what he meant."

But in the car with Aunt Noey the other day we were all totally trapped.  A conversation about her potentially getting a girl dog led to questions about why said girl dog and Arthur would make better siblings than mates because they couldn't have babies.  B wanted to know why.

"Oh, he's fixed."

"What's 'fixed'?"

"It means he's had an operation so he can't have babies."

"How do they do that?"

"Weeeeeellllll..."

We reminded him about the book we read about sperm and eggs and told him that Arthur wasn't able to make sperm.  I thought about avoiding it again, but I was very brave.  I took a deep breath and dived right in.  Penises, wombs, ovaries, fallopian tubes.  Your basic biology.  Done.  Sorted.  That wasn't so bad.  On to other topics!  But then B wanted to know, "Yeah, but HOW does that happen?"  I totally pulled the 'you'll understand better when you get older' card.  To which C replied, "Dad, we should ask your friend Peter.  The one you told us to ask about the shapes of our souls? He probably knows!"

Busted.  I said, "Well, I KNOW.  I just think it's something that you'll understand better when you're a little older."  And then Scott tried to explain that it's not that it's some big mystery, but... and Noey and I and Scott all kept saying, "well, um...see...um..."  Anyway, by the end of the conversation I could at least say it was over.  I told him he could always talk to us about sex.  Whenever he wanted.  Noey pulled a very cool Aunt move and told him since it was sometimes embarrassing to talk to your parents about sex they could always ask her anything too.

My parents took regular 'giggle breaks' whenever we had to talk about sex.  We were always allowed to giggle since it was embarrassing.  I'm finding a lot of these types of things lately.  The types of things where I kind of 'get it', for the first time and I think that how my parents did it maybe wasn't so bad after all.