Boy Parts

My oldest child, E, is a boy. My parents, who had no sons, and sisters were ecstatic upon learning his gender during my pregnancy. My husband put up the ultrasound pictures on the internet with a red circle around his "boyness." I started looking at kids books about trucks and cars, and secretly longed to be able to buy the books about Barbie and My Little Pony.

But really it's been great. I love that he is a boy. Boys are fun. When baby boys pee without a diaper on, it hits the wall, and sometimes gets you in the face.

This brings me to today's topic. I grew up in a penis-free household (can you read that without laughing, I couldn't) as my parents had divorced and I lived with my mom and my sister. So, I will be the first to admit, that I am a bit ignorant on the proper protocol in dealing with this male body part. When Ethan was a baby, I would laugh when I changed his diaper at what I affectionately called his "teenie weenie penie." Mike tried to put an end to this by telling me he didn't want Ethan to have any kind of confusion. He didn't want boys on the playground to say, "I have a (fill in your penis name of choice here)" and Ethan to say, "What? I don't have one of those!" But his plan was to no avail and soon he too was calling E's part a "penie." (But he refused to add teenie weenie).

Well, out of respect to my husband, after Ethan outgrew his infancy, I started using the proper term for the boyness. ( Although I still giggled when he would fiddle with it in the tub.) Recently, on some crude whim, I have started calling it a wiener. Ethan has also adopted this term for it. One night in the bath, this is the conversation that occurred:

E: This is my wiener
Mike: No, E, it's a penis.
E.: Not a penis! Wiener!
Me: (Giggles)
Mike: No, it's a penis.
E: (Really mad) NO PENIS! WIENER!
Me: (hysterical laughter)
Mike: (shuts door on me) See what you're teaching him?

I laugh now as I type this. Yesterday at his well child visit the doctor tried to look "down there" and he said, "No, that's my wiener!" I just thought it was funny.

So at our house it's a wiener. My friend Andrea, who is from Australia, calls it a winky. A rose by any other name... we all know what it is. Even the proper name can cause the giggles, so does it really matter how we label it?