Chloe has no shortage of inappropriate comments.
She asks people, “Why are you so old?” or “Why is your belly so big?” whenever the mood should strike.
She has shifted gears away from age and holiday weight and is now solely focused on the theme of “cute boys.”
She’s learned about cute boys from her sister’s tv shows and understands the following to be true.
There are cute boys and pretty girls like to date them. Anyone can be a cute boy and dating is what cute boys and pretty girls do. Dating is when good looking people smile at each other.
Yesterday in the family change room getting ready for our swimming classes, a young boy came into the room to get ready for his own session and Chloe was quick to tell him he was a cute boy.
I’m sure it made his day, I was a little confused and couldn’t see through my cloudy goggles so was unsure if he was twelve or twenty, with the maintenance staff or a swimmer or even a boy for that matter.
There was no way to tell if I was a pretty girl or not but something tells me in my pre-washed bathing suit and foggy goggles there was no risk of Chloe suggesting the young boy and I have a smile-date.
Enter the Home Depot parking lot where Chloe and I were on a mission to pick up Greg’s birthday present. Something he’s always wanted. Something every man wants and dreams of. A bagger for his lawnmower. The excitement was palpable.
We pulled into our parking spot equidistant from the cart shaped like a car, impossible to move up and down any aisles but offering Chloe twelve seconds of germ-ladened plastic steering wheel distraction and the front entrance which ironically Home Depot, is nowhere near your exit causing no end of parking stress.
I paid no attention to the pick-up truck beside me because I had found the perfect parking spot.
Except when I got out of the van to help Chloe out of her car seat, she spotted the seven or eight construction guys that had filled the pick-up truck beside us, the construction world’s version of clowns in a mini. They were reading jokes on someone’s phone and laughing hysterically at the various punch lines, exactly the way the clowns would want it.
I assumed a representative had been sent in to find a part so they could get back to the job they were working on though the idea of squeezing another person into the truck didn’t seem possible. I think maybe one of them suggested he had a great line up of jokes programmed on his phone and they all made an excuse to walk off the job. It’s hard to find good workers these days.
When there was a lull between giggles Chloe said, “Hey Mommy, are those cute boys?” I didn’t turn around. “Mommy! Mommy!” The cute boys were far more interested in being cute than their jokes and tuned into my three year old who was pointing at each one and saying, “He’s a cute boy. He’s a cute boy.” Then skipping one, “He’s a cute boy.”
“Mommy, are you going to date those cute boys?”
“No Chloe, I am very happily married to your Daddy?” I said with an unnatural, booming frog-in-my-throat voice.
Chloe: I don’t have a Daddy. Maybe one of those cute boys could be my Daddy?
I plunged her into the cart and pretended that running through the entrance and shouting “wheeeeee!” would win us some sort of prize while I whispered, “You do have a Daddy.”
Chloe: Oh yeah. He’s a cute boy.
