Letting Loose

I never would have expected my first real blog post to be about farting. But then pretty much everything about parenthood is surprising.  Case in point: the fact that a good fart can really liven up a room.   

We were all sitting around the toy strewn living room this morning, a half ignored episode of ‘Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’ playing in the background, Josie cuddling her puppy and Jamie gulping down his second sippy cup of apple juice while James was enveloped in his perusal of colts.com.  I was sitting on the couch nursing Johnny when he let one fly, the sound reverberating off his diaper in typical fashion that will make even the smallest baby fart sound menacing.  James looked up from his laptop to congratulate, “Whoa! Nice one, buddy!”  Everyone giggled, including Johnny who broke his nursing latch to look up at me and give a big grin of accomplishment.

It seems the smaller the person, the cuter the fart. A Johnny fart is adorable, a Jamie fart is silly, and a Josie fart is sweet (no pun intended), a mommy fart….well, we all know that ladies never fart…., and a daddy fart is gross. In our family, cutting the cheese almost always produces a good laugh. There's the always popular bath tub fart and the classic blame-it-on-the-dog fart, which in our house is true at least 50% of the time. Pudge's middle name isn't Tooter for no reason. 

Somewhere along the line, when Josie was learning to put together sentences, she began to substitute the word “toot” for “excuse” in the exclamation, “excuse me.” So whenever she hears a fart she says, “Toot me!” or “Toot you!” Ha ha ha! How can you not smile after that? No matter how smelly it may be….