Being straightforward

Long before I even had children, I knew that when I did, I wanted to have an open and honest relationship with them. I've always wanted to have children who felt they could talk to me about anything. As part of this, maybe overly optimistic, attitude I wanted to have open conversations with them about anything including (gasp!) sex. There hasn't been any talk about sex directly, but there have been questions about body parts and having babies.

One day Rion walked in on me while I was gettng dressed. "What are those mommy?" Ok, I can do this I thought. "Those are breasts," I said. "Oh," he said, "I like breasts." I laughed at his response and was relieved I could give him that answer. Still it was a little hard for me to say breast in front of him, thinking it would be his new word to tell every living soul.

Coming from a family that doesn't talk about such things, it has been hard to talk to my toddlers in this open way. It wasn't until recently that I got the courage to answer Torii's question truthfully and told him that was his penis. He has been calling it his "naked" for awhile now. Even in front of my three year old I'm sure my face was flush red and I stuttered as I said it. Torii thought nothing of it. He repeated it once and I haven't heard it since.

Now that we are expecting a baby I've had to field a few inquiries about the process in which the baby comes out. No questions about how the baby got there in the first place, just how it was going to come out. I'm pretty sure I failed miserably with this explanations. There were no technical terms, just hand movements as I said, "I push the baby out down here." Some weeks later when my husband and kids accompanied me to the doctor for the ultrasound, Rion proclaimed loudly that the baby was going to come out of mommy's butt. So I could have done a better job explaining that, although I would have been mortified had the word vagina come out of his mouth. Now I just tell the boys that I have to go to the hospital to get the baby out and that seems to satisfy them.

I'm expecting more questions about child birth soon as the baby is due in about a month. There will probably also be questions about breastfeeding and why their baby sister has different parts than them. I guess I will just take a deep breath and explain it to them best I can. I will feel embarrassed, but I'm sure they won't.