THINGS ONLY CHILDREN SAY (INTRODUCTORY BIRDS-AND-BEES EDITION)

Child development experts will tell us parents to be prepared with age-appropriate answers for the inevitable questions about how they came to be. Being the nuanced and thoughtful dad I am, with none of the previous generations' silly silly hangups about the human reproductive process, I considered myself ready for whatever Socratic queries the Noodle and Beast threw at me.

"Well, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, and they've had a few, and that scene in 'The Thomas Crown Affair' is on, and any other kids are sleeping, and the phone's not ringing, and they're not exhausted, and they don't smell like gasoline and sweat from mowing the lawn, and the litterbox doesn't need cleaning, and the bills have been paid, and the laundry's done, and the dishes are done, and the trash has been taken out, and the cats haven't vomited on the bed, and everybody's been checked for ticks, and nobody has gas, and nobody decided to load up on curry at dinner, and there's no JW's at the door, well, THEN what happens is..."

That's a good start, right?

What I was NOT prepared for was to be cross-examined on the topic by Beast, in the middle of a busy shoe store.

"THAT'S not how babies happen, Daddy. I'm asking mom."

What? I didn't hardly even get started. What did I say?

Wrong movie?

The shoes fit great, however. Kudos to Montano's in Saugerties.

SORTING OUT THE SANTA THING (PART 1 OF MANY, WE SUSPECT)

Noodle: "What if I have to go potty while Santa's here?"

Me: "You just go straight to the bathroom same as always. But no peeking down the hallway."

Noodle: "But what if Santa has to go potty?"

Me: "He always makes sure he goes potty before he leaves the North Pole."

Noodle: "What if the reindeer have to go potty?"

Me: "They wait until they're flying over the ocean so they probably won't hit anything."

(Yeah, YOU try coming up with a better answer in a snap in that kind of situation.)

IN WHICH I MAKE AN EMBARRASSING DISCOVERY

While searching for the spool of line for the weedwhacker today, I found an ancient mixtape from a woman who may have wanted to be my girifriend many many years ago - and who then came to her senses and ran all the way back home to Wisconsin just to be on the safe side, because the 30-year-old me wasn't the amazing specimen of Compleat Manhood you see before you today.

Having seen the site "Cassettes from my Ex" a while back, I thought I'd write its story as best as I could recall.

Suffice to say I'm going to do my damndest to teach my little Beast not to make the same mistakes I made back then, because if there's one regret I have in my life it's that I didn't have it together enough to meet Her Awesomeness when I was younger, so that we'd have had that much more time together now.

I also wish I had it together enough to remember where the hell I put that spool.

STATIONS OF THE BUNNY

We've been trying to explain to Noodle, and eventually to Beast, that Easter isn't all about candy and eggs and those mall bunnies who always look like they spent the previous night in an epic blunt-off with Willie and Snoop, e.g.:

Duuuuude. Whoooooa.

So getting beyond the bunny-stuff means explaining Jesus Christ as best we can, and handling questions like "what's spurged mean?" Er, that's 'scourged', my little love. Like we really wanted to go there with a four-year-old. Thank you for that charming contribution to punitive history, Roman Empire.

Then came "They put NAILS in his HANDS?!"

Yes, and this is why Daddy tells you to stay away from his tools.

This kid and her powers of observation, I swear. Next time we're in church we're not sitting anywhere near that particular Station of the Cross.

How come other Catholics with four-year-olds get way cuter Good Friday questions while we're stuck with a three-foot-nine Helen Thomas asking about hyssop? Noodle might be taller than the actual Helen Thomas at this point, but I digress. We tried to distill Easter down to the basics and gently steer away from the gruesome bits, but no.

Maybe it's best to give up while we're behind and let the lads handle the issue: