Let's talk about "that s-word," baby. And some other stuff.

What a week! It was my first commuter week, and from the time I turned "on" for my first day Tuesday morning, I did not turn "off" until about 7:30 on Friday night. It was very fast and very intense and feels like being home. Tuesday I got home around 8:30, kissed on my boys whom I had not seen for sixteen days, had dinner, cried because Corey was procrastinating loading the dishwasher, ate a red velvet cupcake and went to bed. Wednesday night I had decided to stay in New Orleans, so Corey and the boys came down for pizza at Slice on St. Charles and we holed up in the Hampton Inn that night. Thursday night I got home around 9:15. Friday I worked from home and turned the computer off at a little after 7. Next week Corey goes back to work and the boys start swimming lessons and go back to camp, and we begin our new routine.

Watching "Wild Hogs" in the Hampton Inn. Great hotel, but no pay-per-view.

This is what happened during the commercial breaks.

We had promised the boys that they could grow their hair out this summer. Catholic schools require that hair be an inch above the eyebrows and not touch the ears or the collar, so school year hair is pretty short. Landen had long hair when I met him, and Jake dreams of a long hairstyle with lots of fringe - more than we could do in a summer. BUT, they were shockingly shaggy when they came home from their two week vacation with their grandparents. It was almost the first thing we noticed when we laid eyes upon their beaming faces.



Landen's ears are not even visible through all this har. Jake's sideburns are an homage to the seventies. For a guy who's had his head in a very short fade for thirteen years, this is tortuous for their dad.

Jake hates getting haircuts. We have had a throwdown in the salon before. His dad and I can take him together to get his hair cut, and he will still stare at me like I've murdered babies for the duration of the haircut and not speak to me afterward. It's like telling him he'll never fight crime. I was supposed to take them to get haircuts after I was done working Friday evening, but that didn't happen at a workable hour. So today we made a family trip to the mall for some lunch and some haircuts at Regis.

Jake says that this was his first time to get his hair shampooed in the bowl. I have obviously done a serious disservice to my children, since that is the best part. His body language indicates to me that he favored the treatment.

Landen only remembers having his head washed in a bowl once. He had a definite swagger when he left the salon.



I would not let the stylist take any length from the front, just asked her to clean up the sides and back and blend it with the top. She may be our permanent hair girl. It was parted and styled when he got out of the chair, but he could not stop playing with it.



This is my boy Jake, who does not hate me today because you almost cannot tell that he got his hair cut. I cut a little off the back myself when he got out of the shower. The point is that he doesn't have sideburns like Wolverine anymore and it's not as tall. His dad is no happier with this, but Jake appreciated my understanding of his Hair Dreams.

There you go. My children were gone for two weeks and I had very little to say. Now that I'm giving you what you asked for, all I have to report on is that my children got mid-summer hair trims today.

Actually, last night we had to have the birds and the bees talk with the boys. We've been doing this incrementally over the last year. They learned first where babies were made and then learned how babies came out. We had been planning to tell them how babies got in there before they started school next month, lest they would be learning it on the school bus, which is where Corey got his sex education. You have to get in front of the story in order to control it, they told me in public relations school. This became necessary during the devolution of another parent-child conversation about husband-wife relationships, so we had to make the hasty decision to explain "Doing It" on a Friday night.

So on a Friday night, when all my single friends were having cocktails with their single friends to wind down from the work week, I was using tinker toys to animate (not really) how a man and a woman make a baby. I didn't simulate the action with the tinker toys, but my book my mother used compared men and women to puzzle pieces, and that has always stuck with me. I did not have a puzzle handy, so I used two tinker toys to show how man parts and woman parts fit together. I've ruined tinker toys for them for life. I know this because I hate puzzles.

We stuck to the very most basic explanation we could think of and talked about "that s-word" (as Landen now refers to it) as Jesus wants us to do it - after marrying someone they want to be with when they're ninety of whom I also approve. It was important to Corey that they understand that you do not have to be married or in love to do "that s-word" and make a baby, but it was the way Jesus and their parents would hope for them to do it. He did assure them that more detailed conversations with them about the functions of their personal reproductive organs would follow in a couple years, without me in the room. We all agreed that moms really do not care to hear about what their sons are doing with their business. We call it "the business" at our house.

I have relatives who comment that they want to see what goes on in the Allbritton house just based on the hilarity of what Nell and Corey post on their Facebook walls. This was one of the nights I guarandamntee someone who was not my children would have really enjoyed a stiff drink and a big, big laugh. If you are Jake and Landen, however, the memory of your mom waving a blue stick tinker toy stuck into a yellow disc tinker toy in your face while telling you that Jesus wants you to be in love and married first will give them at least three months of therapy as adults.

And I'm making an appointment soon, because I understood looking at their faces while they were learning this that the MOST we're going to be able to hope for is that they wait for a girl they love. Have I mentioned how much I dread teenagers?

And do not try to get my children to explain "that s-word" to you when you see them, no matter that this would be The Funniest Shit Ever, because they are forbidden from speaking about it outside this house under pain of shaved heads.

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