Take one silly, teething baby ...

Add one dollhouse potty WITH ATTACHED BOWL BRUSH ...















Laugh heartily. (At least it's not a real toilet brush):

I walk into the family room, where there are people wearing what looks like 18th-century garb on my television set and a deeply portentous narrator's voice filling my entertainment space. Great. Educational crap.

Me, exasperated: What are we watching?
Him: "Nova"!
Me, amused: I'm sorry, "Nova"? With dramatization? Since when does your beloved "Nova" offer dramatization?

Minutes go by, although let's face it, it could have been just seconds ...

Me: Why are we still watching this? I'm in no mood to learn anything. Can you turn on "Greek" instead?
Him: But this is really exciting stuff. It's leading up to how they figured out E= mc2!
Me: What is that anyway?
Him: It's like the greatest equation of all time!
Me: Yeah, but what is it?
Him: It's the key to ...
Me: No, what does it stand for?
Him: Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared.
Me: But that doesn't make any sense.
Him: I know! That's what is so incredible about it. Think about it: energy, mass and speed of light in the same equation!
Me: No, I mean that "C" would stand for "speed of light." That doesn't make sense.
Him: No, but: Energy is related to mass times the speed of light squared! It's amazing. Doesn't that just blow your mind?
Me: What blows my mind is that they decided that "C" stood for the "speed of light," when there is clearly no C in the phrase. And also, that we're watching this instead of "Greek."

As previously mentioned on this blog, the biggest little person in our house has a problem with the pronouns. So, "he's" are "she's" and "she's" are "he's" and "I" or "me" is almost always third-person "MJ." (Although, she has a very fun ongoing joke right now in which if you tell her she's a silly goose or a funny bunny or what have you, she smiles and responds with great glee, "No, I'm not! I'm MJ!" Which I love. They really ought to bottle the cuteness.)

She's sort of like Stephen Colbert, except instead of not seeing race and color, she doesn't see gender.

Anyway, because of her pronoun confusion, she's come up with a new twist on an old favorite song. This is how she sings it:

Twinkle twinkle, little star
How you wonder what you are
Up above the clouds so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle twinkle little star
How you wonder what you are

... every single time.

A twinkle twinkle star with an identity problem. Preschool really is advanced these days.

While I was at the gym early this morning, Randy was awakened by an MJ who was completely soaked from the waist down. "I peed, Daddy," she told him -- which is really the way you want to start your day: being notified of preschooler potty activities gone awry. And then she handed him one of her clean shirts and a clean pair of underwear. Which is resourceful if not entirely correct.

The mystery was: Where was the rest of the pee? Her bed was dry, so that wasn't the scene of the crime. No carpet puddles were discovered in the upstairs jurisdiction. Hmmm...

So, when I got home shortly after "the incident," I asked her , "MJ, where were you when you went?"

"Nothing," she said, which has become her go-to answer for every question. (Which I kind of love, if it weren't so obviously incriminating.) And then she said, "In there," pointing to the bathroom next to the laundry room, into which I had just walked to get a clothes basket. And then I heard a splash.

"If you peed in the bathroom," I asked, staring down at my bare feet, "what am I standing in right now?"

As it turns out, the puddle extended across two rooms, from the one in which she had just missed making it to the potty in time, to the one where she opened up the dryer to get that clean shirt and undies out for Randy to change her.

At least she knows her way around a laundry room. This gives me hope that she'll be able to take care of herself when she's an adult ... well, if she can find the bathroom in time.

My poor peanut had a rough day at preschool last Thursday. It was rainy and yucky, and that just about summed up her mood, too. They were having a "Fancy Nancy" ice cream party that Little L and I went in to help set up for. At the appointed time, MJ shuffled in with her class with her fancy bead necklace and sparkly crown that she had made the day I was in the classroom as the "teacher's assistant" (there's a job description I didn't prepare for in college), looking so glum I wanted to promise her ice cream every day for a year.

So they all sat down in front of little name cards they had also made, and she looked up at Little L and I standing nearby and tried to muster a smile, weak though it was. She ate her ice cream, keeping her head down pretty much the whole time, until the entertainment portion of the morning began.

Apparently in the book Fancy Nancy, which they had been reading all week at school, a waiter drops a tray full of ice cream. So the preschool folks had one of the dads carry a tray full of empty Styrofoam bowls between the tables where the kids sat, and then pretend to trip and drop the tray.

But he really did fall, a la Jack Tripper in "Three's Company," and made a pretty good crashing sound for a fake tumble. The tray clambored to the ground, the bowls went flying ... and the kids, most of them, weren't quite sure what to make of it. A few laughed, but mostly they were quietly unnerved by it. I mean, after all, here's someone who could have been their own daddy, falling to the ground with a great commotion. Even I was a little worried, and I was in on the joke. Surely someone would cry. Surely, someone would wonder about the safety of the daddy/fake waiter.

And sure enough, above the confusion came one colossal cry and accompanying bucket of tears. From my MJ. And what did she say, when she stopped heaving long enough to say something? Did she express concern for the poor guy who took the fall, you might ask?

Not exactly.

"Oh no!" she wailed, "The ice cream! The ice cream is all gone! What are we going to do?"

Oh, MJ.

To be fair, though, she's not totally about the desserts. At the end of the day, the teacher asked each of the kids what they're favorite part of the day had been. She wrote each of their responses next to their names on a poster and taped it to the wall in the hallway where we parent types were waiting to pick up our small ones. MJ's answer? "Ice cream and Mommy."

I'm sure she didn't mean it in that order.

I went to the dentist a few days ago, lugging both little people there with me (hey, the dentist said I could, so why not). Shockingly, they both behaved like their toy privileges depended upon it, which they kind of did.

But here's the best part of the trip: As I was leaving, walking down a very long hallway as MJ and Little L peered into each exam room and watched the drills (is there a worse sound, I ask you?), a dental hygienist bolted out of her patient's room, followed us up to the reception desk and stopped me.

"Where," she asked, all urgency, "did you get those jeans?"

I looked down at my sweet Old Navy low-risers, which just that morning I had pondered tossing out because of the tears in the hems at the bottom. (I flipped the rips up and wore them anyway, because that's how I roll.) Wow. Good thing I didn't, I thought.

"These jeans?" I asked her.

"No, no," she said, still with the urgency in her voice, "I meant those jeans."

She pointed to the ones on my one-year-old.

"I just had to come down here and ask," she told me. "I just love them."

This actually happened, people. I got out-vogued by a kid who can't even walk yet. What does that say about me?

So I was making out my annual grid of fall television shows -- new ones worth watching, days they're on, times they air, returning shows, conflicts in recording, etc. You know, like everybody does this time of year. (What? You don't? Hmmm.) It's sort of my equivalent of fantasy football or baseball, except my opponents are the networks and my DVR. Oh, and time, which, as always, is a worthy and formidable foe in my quest to conquer all my favorite shows in a single week while making sure my children are well-fed and clean. They generally are.

Anyway, I finished my grid, looked up from my work -- a timeline of teenage romps, medical dramas, sci-fi nutjobs and sitcoms about friends who don't have children and spend way too much time in each other's apartments to be platonic -- and gave Randy the news.

"It's looking pretty bad," I told him.
Him: "Yeah?"
Me: "Yep."
Him: "What's the diagnosis?"
Me: "That Monday night at 8 p.m. is where our television dreams go to die. We have Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dancing with the Stars ..."
Him: "Ugh."
Me: "Anyway ... Dancing with the Stars, Big Bang Theory, Chuck ...
Him: "Uh-oh."
Me: "... and Gossip Girl."
Him: [sarcastic gasp of tragedy] "Oh no! Not Gossip Girl! Anything but Gossip Girl! What are we going to do?"
Me: [ignoring lack of appreciation for my pretty, pretty show] "Well, I think it's clear what we have to do. I can dump Dancing with the Stars, I guess ..."
Him: "Please?"
Me: "... but unless two of the other four are available online -- and here I have to exclude Gossip Girl, because you know I love it, xoxo, and I like my teen dramas in full screen, in all their backstabbing glory, as they were meant to be seen -- we're going to need another DVR. What do you say?"
Him: [with a promising note in his voice] "Well, I think we could manage that."
Me: "Yeah?"
Him: "Sure. Just take MJ out of preschool and we'll use part of her tuition to pay for another DVR so we can keep watching all of our shows."
Me: "Awesome. I love it. I'm calling Time Warner Cable tomorrow!"

It's time once again to check in with the antics of the MotherBunker nephew, and this time it's not necessarily because my own offspring have no fodder to provide the blog today. It's because if I don't keep my laptop on my lap, he might sell it right out from under my nose.

So, to recap: He's 7. Going on 42. A few weeks ago, he checked his piggy bank and decided it was getting a little too low on funds. I don't know why a 7-year-old needs a nest egg, but I'm sure I will one day. When I have a 7-year-old. Who's going on 42.

Anyway ... to quote the nephew, "When I get down to $2, I've got to start selling stuff."

Not his stuff, mind you. Other people's. He sold a pair of gloves with fur trim, belonging to his older sister but hoping to be used again one day by his mother, for $2.The taker? His grandmother. He sold a box of blueberry muffin mix, which my sister purchased for 75 cents, for the profit-making price of $1. He sold a chunk of brownie for a penny. (A penny?)

And then one day, my sister came home from work hungry, and headed for the bread drawer, where all good members of our family go for empty calories.

Except it was empty.

"Hold on there," my nephew, who had spirited the loaves to his "desk" ... aka, his shop, said. "Slices of wheat are $1 and white is 50 cents."

"Why is wheat more expensive?" my sister asked.

"Because it's harder to make. Obviously."

Obviously.

... not that it's a competition or anything, but I think it's safe to say that on her first day, MJ's preschool got the better of this mommy. No big deal, or anything, it's just that when I pulled her out of the car to take her inside, I looked down and saw a long dribble of something wet all the way down her orange sherbet-colored shirt. Great. Maybe it's just water.

"MJ, what is that?" I asked her.

She looked down. "Oh," she said, in her best don't-worry-about-it-Mommy voice (which she inherited from her father, who likes to tell me that he'll let me know when it's time to worry), "that's just toothpaste."

Toothpaste dribble. She missed her mouth while brushing. By the time we got inside, it was that lovely chalky shade that makes any first day of school truly special. Oh well. Obviously, there are worse things.

Like going out to your car after dropping off your newly minted preschooler and hearing this sound when you turn the key in the ignition: "Cluuunk. Cluuunk. Cluuuuuuunk." Then checking your purse (wait ... do I have my purse? ... yes, good) for your cell phone, which, like your car, is also dead. Awe.some. Grab baby from back seat, head back inside to find an old-fashioned land line, call husband at work and interrupt his day so he can drive over and jumpstart your piece of crap Camry ... which the Toyota service people swear has nothing wrong with it, even though this is roughly the sixth time it has died on you in the past two years.

But on a brighter note, MJ conquered preschool just fine. We thought she might be a little apprehensive, but that was before we let her pick out her own pair of tennis shoes last night -- Dora shoes, which are slightly better than Cinderella shoes -- and she couldn't wait to wear them. I was surprised she didn't ask to sleep in them ... that is, when she was sleeping last night, which wasn't for long. (Yes, we're back on that kick again. The mood of our house currently? Tired. What? That's not an actual mood? Yeah, well, we're too tired to have an actual mood.)

She spent several minutes showing off her new shoes before we left the house, and once she entered her new classroom, she plunked herself down at a Play-doh table and never looked back. She honestly did not even look up when I told her goodbye and headed out to my dead Camry. "Later, mom. See you in a few. I'll be hangin' here with my new homies."

Plus, she is CLEARLY already a genius after only one day of school. CLEARLY. At bedtime, she decided she needed to "change the sheets" on her dolly's bed. And because, perhaps I mentioned, I'M TIRED, I tried to persuade her that dolly was already asleep and it would be rude to wake her up in the middle of her dreams. Not that MJ would understand that concept, since she DOESN'T SLEEP.

"Mommy, Dolly not asleep yet," MJ told me.

"Oh yeah, sure she is," I said. "You tucked her in. She's gone to sleep."

"No Mommy," she told me, with a look of concern for my lack of intelligence, "she's not. Look -- her eyes are still open."

Back when I was a diligent blogger, i.e., when I rarely took time to clean house and my car was always late for an oil change/inspection/etc., things would happen that I knew I'd want to write about, and I would scramble for a notepad to write it down before I forgot. (I still have to write EVERYTHING down, mind you, and here's a sampling of what appears on my kitchen calendar right now: "clean oven," "rose bush trellis," "philosophy." Yes, I have to remind myself to clean my oven, as if the crumpled pizza carcinogens smoking from its bottom aren't reminder enough. And don't get too excited about that "philosophy" bit; I have not taken up higher studies just as my beloved fall television schedule gets underway. That refers to the skin care company philosophy.)

ANYWAY, as I was clearing out some junk today, I came across a little mini- notation I made several months ago, little bits of dialogue MJ and I had shared. Without further ado, and so I can cross something off my to-do list (which feels so great to-do, ahem), I present "The Tale of the Boon" and "Perfect," two slices of life with MJ:

MJ has a ridiculously good memory. A month or two ago, she got a green dolphin balloon at a birthday party, and toted the thing around the rest of the day. She also toted it out onto our deck, where, predictably, inevitably, she lost it to the clouds. Today, we were sitting on the deck, and she looked up at the sky and said, "Mommy, where's the green 'boon?" It took me a very long time to figure out what she was talking about, and when I did, I reminded her that we'd lost it when she'd let go of it.

"Oh," she said, "Maybe the air took the 'boon to the boys to play with."

I have no idea who the boys are.

And on that same day, she had been sprawled out on the kitchen floor coloring with markers -- a little bit on paper, mostly on herself. She hopped up, ran past where I was standing at the stove and into the bathroom. A few minutes later she came out -- inexplicably wearing her backpack -- and said, "There Mommy. I washed my knees. All the marker's off. I'm all perfect."

"You're perfect?" I asked.
"Yeah, I'm all perfect," she said. "I'm all clean and fluffy."

The cutest. Just the cutest.