WARNING:  This post contains explicit material that may not be family-friendly.

Small children are fascinated by adult stuff.  Forget fancy, pricey, age-appropriate toys.  My 4-year-old would prefer unlimited access to a roll of Scotch tape and a box of business envelopes than a Playmobile Flower-Fairy Treehouse.

“Mommy, I just need a little piece of tape,” says A. sweetly.  (Which is grudgingly handed over from its hiding spot at the bottom of a basket of bills).

Three minutes later:  ”I need another piece of tape!” 

“Okay, but this is the last one.  We can’t waste tape.”

Two minutes later.  ”I NEED MORE TAPE.  Just one more little tiny piece of tape…Please, Please, I REALLY NEED it!”

The Tape Wars will go on all afternoon until I put my foot down and become Stingy Mean Mommy, guardian of the precious, practical tape.  Meanwhile, two-year-old C. is obsessed with anything adult and private.  She is in 7th Heaven with a box of OB tampons, dumping them out, running away with them, hiding them in her room like treasures.  

One evening last week I was upstairs filling the bath, folding laundry and laying out bedtime accoutrements.  C. was being very quiet somewhere nearby, and I should have been suspicious.  Long periods of quiet inevitably mean the girls are:

1.) up on my desk drawing in permanent marker all over my laptop.

2.) covering their entire bodies and faces with red and blue poster paint, appearing gleefully in the kitchen like small members of the Blue Man Group.

3.) using an entire glue-stick in their hair.  A. alerted me to this project with a nervous– “Mommy don’t come in here!”

But that particular night C. was naked in our bedroom exploring the contents of T’s bedside table.  Throat drops, pencils, Benadryl tablets, letters, magazines and Daddy’s Soap.  This last product is a parental euphemism for our luxury, water-based, sensual lubricant, which costs $18 a bottle and comes in a white pump container (like liquid hand soap).  The fullness of this container is a good barometer for the health of our sex life.  Unsurprisingly, one bottle can last a long, long time in The Baby Cave.

The next thing I knew, C. had climbed in the bath herself with something clutched in her hand.  ”Carmen, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Using Daddy’s Soap!” she said proudly.  She had emptied the entire 16 oz. pump bottle of lube into the bath with her, turning the bathwater cloudy and slippery-slick.  

I couldn’t reprimand her.  The child thought it was “soap,” after all.  No Bath tonight!  I wrapped her up in a towel and emptied the tub.

Tags:   adults · children · SexualityNo Comments