Are you SURE that's a vagina?

For those of you who are teaching your kids the generic "girls have a vagina" lesson, you ARE teaching them that the proper term for the entire outer package is vulva and not vagina, right? I mean, you know that the words are not synonymous, don't you?  

Just in case, let me give you a quick anatomy lesson. 

Vagina and vulva are not the same thing.  They are not interchangeable physiological terms.

The vagina is part of the inner workings, not the outer.


I asked this question on a social networking forum and got a variety of responses including this one:

"My child is too young to know the technical terms for her body parts." (Ignore the fact that the pet name we have created for her genitalia is four syllables long and she's already made up a song about it.)

And this one:
"Vulva is just a gross word."   (Vulva is not a gross word.  "MOIST" is a gross word.)  
  
And also this one: "It all means the same thing."

(To say that it's all the same thing is as inaccurate as saying that your hand is a finger and your finger is a hand and that's just plain silly.)

You know what this post needs?  Venn Diagrams!  (I know they look like crazy cartoon breasts.  Shut up.)

It's true that all rectangles are parallelograms, but not all parallelograms are rectangles.  
Likewise, all vulvae contain vaginas (or rather, the vaginal opening), but all vaginas don't contain the vulvae.

Yes, there is a difference and the difference is huge.  Vulva = clitoris, labia (2 sets) urethra, vaginal opening.  Vagina = the canal that leads from the vaginal opening to the cervix.   

Do you need another diagram?  Okay, here:  

So if you choose to shave your vulva, that's cool.  Get creative. Have fun with it.  However, if you choose to shave your vagina, it's not going to end well.  Don't use the good towels. 


Now, I know there will be someone who will get all worked up about this. Calm down. You can teach your kids whatever you want.  Don't sweat it because some stranger on the internet told you that it's the wrong word.   You're not breaking any law of child rearing.  No member of the Vulva Brigade will show up and ticket you for referring to your lady bits as your bajingo and hand you some reading material about the inaccurately named Vagina Monologues. I'm not going to take away your euphemisms.  Hell, euphemisms are fun!  Tell them it's a Harvey Wallbanger or a FlufferNutter if you like.   


I'm just saying that technically, it's incorrect.  


To recap:

The vulva is the correct term for the outside parts as a collective whole.

The vagina is the correct term for the "collective hole".  

What's your favorite euphemism for the VULVA?

  

  

She did it again!

Our winter holidays started out as normally as they could have, considering who we are.  We had our annual dinner and gift exchange at the in-laws' after church on Christmas Eve, which is always a great time; dinner was wonderful, conversation was even better and there was wine.  Yay, MOSCATO!

It seems like every holiday, something happens that I simply MUST write about because...(because I'm an obsessive over-sharing maniac) because I'm a blogger.  Sharing the mundane stuff like this is my life, my passion. 

This year, Christmas was full of blog-worthy stuffs to relay to you, gentle reader.  Sadly, the majority of it was lost on Christmas morning because that is when tragedy struck.

I'm getting ahead of myself (again).


A Holiday On Hold
The girls each got a new pair of warm, fuzzy, stay-at-home-socks in their Christmas stockings from jolly old Saint Nicholas.  They love All Things Soft and Fluffy, so of course they put them on immediately.   This is important.  Trust me.

After the last present was opened, the plan was for the kids and The Man to clean up the mess from Unwrapaganza while I started a lovely Christmas breakfast for everyone. That plan was rudely interrupted when I heard Lily yell something that derailed our lazy Christmas morning and sent it careening off into a ditch:

"MOM!  SAM GOT A SPLINTER!!"

Sam ran through the dining room in the slippery wood-collecting-socks that evil bastard brought for her and when she skidded to a stop, yes indeed, Sam...got a splinter.  

If you are a regular reader of my family's tales, you will remember that this has happened before.  Many of you are already aware that I have a child who is a magnet for splinters and when she gets one, she doesn't mess around with the tiny stuff that can be gotten out with a simple tweezers or the aid of a needle.  No way, no how!  When Samantha does it, she goes all out - sliding across the hard-wood floors, yards at a stretch, to see just how much flooring she can strip off in one go.  "FIND ALL THE SPLINTERS!" she cries.  She also gets these enormous planks embedded so deeply and so securely into her skin that it requires medical attention to retrieve them.  THIS was one of those times. 

Yeah, that's not gonna cut it.

After last year's ordeal (which I will link again, because it's just that incredible), we knew not to waste any time waiting for an army of white corpuscles to stop what they were doing and meander over to the foreign body that had taken refuge in the sole of her foot, for she was likely to lose the entire appendage by the time they cooperated enough to force the splinter out.  It was time to get dressed and head to the Convenient Care Clinic.  *nodding*  No Post-Gift Exchange Nap for you, Johnny-Boy.  No waking up to the smell of maple bacon crisping in the oven.  Coats on, everybody!  Let's move out!

The Waiting is the hardest part

We got to the Convenient Care Clinic, checked Samantha in and began to wait.

And wait...


And wait...

Three bored children, two parents, one large plank of wood didn't make for a very merry Christmas.  At least we were all together...irritated, but together.

Soon...(what am I saying? Strike that...) After waiting roughly the same amount of time it takes to cook a 20 pound turkey, we were shown to a room where a nurse got the skinny on Sam's allergies (or lack thereof), and a brief run-down of how she came to have a hunk of petrified oak jammed inside her person.  When she had enough information, we were then told to follow her to the next room and you'll never guess what happened there!

Aw, you guessed it: more waiting.


So we snapped a picture of the adorable six-year-old's foot to kill some time:

*pffft* Well, that took all of thirty seconds.  What do we do now?

As if sensing my boredom...irritability...and general impatience that this was taking SO LONG, the more mobile members of Sam's entourage began to play a nifty little game called "TOUCH EVERYTHING!!!"  Fun stuff, that game.   It's guaranteed to make your mother go abso-fricking-lutely insane in a matter of minutes. 

Just when we were sure they had forgotten about us (I have no idea how that was possible, as we are noisy and were cordoned off from the rest of the office by only a curtain), in walked the doctor who would surely save Sam from the stabbing pain of Pinocchio Syndrome and us from the agonizing wait. 

He took one look at it and said, sounding much like Gary Cole in Office Space: "Mm...yeah, I think we're going to have to go ahead and, uh...numb that."  Well, gee, Bill, do you think so?  I mean, look at it.  There's nothing to grab on to.  Any fool can see that we're going to have to go in after it and one of us may not come out alive.  If you want to try that on a frightened six-year-old without Novocaine, be my guest.  Just use your Jedi mind trick and we'll be on our way.  Moron.

Instead of using The Force, we (Dr. Bill and I) opted to put a topical numbing agent on it so the needle wouldn't be as traumatizing to my six-year-old.  Add fifteen more minutes of waiting, this time with Mommy sporting a pair of purple surgical gloves to apply some jelly textured numb-making stuffs to Sam's foot with "gentle PRESSURE" (*sigh*  Poor Sam), follow that with Dr. Bill shooting Novocaine into the entry point, and we were ready to begin. ("BEGIN?!" WTH?!)   He made a few futile attempts to grab the splinter, but found he was unable to get a good grip on it with the smallest hemostat he had, so after all this time, Good Doctor Nimble Fingers couldn't get the splinter out and he sent us to the hospital emergency room.
Damn.  This rivaled last year's splinterectomy debacle in a big, sad way.

At the ER
I am happy to report that after another hour of waiting , an ultrasound on Samantha's foot, two near-fistfights between the Tired and the Hungry, and about a thousand mobile status updates to Facebook, Sam was once again, splinter free.   HALLELUJAH!  

Holy crap!

By this time, we were an hour late for dinner at my mother's house, so we gathered up Sam, the splinter and the rest of our clan and headed for Nana and Poppa's house, stopping ever-so-briefly at home to grab the presents and the makings of my contribution to our meal (thank God I didn't have to make anything more complex than green bean casserole).

We'll call this next part "Splinter At Large"
When we finally got to my parents' house, Sam immediately wanted to show the splinter to her cousins.  Now, after the morning's ordeal, we didn't expect her to actually take the splinter OUT  to show it off and we sure as hell didn't expect the splinter to make a break for it, but that's what happened.  When she opened the container, it fell.   It fell near(?)...under(?)...IN(?)...the cushions of the couch.  It was lost.  Oh, damn.  That's at least a hundred dollar splinter (and probably more, as we have yet to receive the bill from the ER).  We wanted to keep it and put it in our shadow box of "Stuff that got stuck in our kids".  Shoot.  Now it's gone.  Bummer.

Was Lost But Now Am Found
I went to my parent's house the day after Christmas to have coffee and in a last-ditch effort, searched the couch cushions once more, to see if I could find that blasted splinter.  I picked up a cushion and clapped it once and the splinter fell onto the couch.
*THUD*
Me:  No. Freaking. Way.  I FOUND IT!  QUICK!  DAD, GET THE BOTTLE!  GET THE BOTTLE!  
My Father: Where is it?
Me:  It's still in my purse!
My Father:  Don't move!  I'm on it!

And so we wrangled that splinter into the bottle and closed it up tight. REALLY TIGHT.

That oughta hold it.

 Once again, the world is safe for Samantha's tender feet.  Sort of. 


We're getting carpet this spring.

The Amazing Adventures of Hop-Along Sam and the Splinter of Doom!

JUST A SPLINTER.

Normally, a splinter wouldn't be blog-worthy, but when you're the parent of an overachiever, it becomes a major production.

Our story begins on a rainy winter morning. While stalling in her preparation for our friends' wedding, Samantha decided not to put on her tights as Mother had instructed, but to instead play a game of Chase After The Cat on the hardwood floor of our dining room.

And Sam got a splinter.
Sam screamed.
I pulled it out.
It was big.

(Now, I say "big" and, in average splinter terms, this one was about half an inch long total, with half of that under her skin. That would be "big" in Splinter-ese. Have you got the picture?)

She complained that her leg hurt even after the splinter was removed, but how much of that was pain or general crabbiness we didn't know. We suspected that it was sore because it was such a big splinter. She limped for an hour. She then proceeded to dance the night away with her sisters and the bride and groom, doing the Hokey-Pokey and turning herself around, limp and pain-free...or so we thought.



The next day, it looked like this:

Still a little swollen, I was concerned that there might have been another piece in there. We picked off that little scab and to our amazement, there was another piece of splinter attached to the scab. This one was about a quarter of an inch long. Well! NOW she should be feeling MUUUCH better.
We thought that was the last of it.

Until.
Two months later, while I was tucking her in, she requested a pillow for under her leg. I said, "What for?" "For where my splinter was. Hello-o." "What?? Is that leg bothering you?" "No, just when I lay on it." "Let me see your leg. Sam."


HOLY CRAP!!!

SPLINTERECTOMY -

After many exciting (for Sam) and nerve-wracking (for Mom and Dad) visits to the doctor, an orthopedic specialist, an x-ray and an MRI, we finally learned that there were still pieces of that danged splinter in her little leg muscle. STILL! AFTER TWO MONTHS! And it would require surgery to get those pieces out!

(I accept this Darwin Award on behalf of the clueless parents of splinter-filled children everywhere.)

THE BIG DAY!

Finally the day of Sam's Splinterectomy was upon us.

First, she watched Dora the Explorer while we waited for her nurse to ask us a bajillion questions.




Then a nice lady came in and painted her leg with Snooki Bronzer. Ooh, purdy!


Then they put this adorable little shower cap on her and wheeled her off.


But first, a smile for all her FANS:

Still all giggles as she's wheeled into surgery.

Forty-five minutes and two planks of wood later, a groggy Sam wakes up.


Sam, can you give me a smile, honey?

*snicker* Thanks, Dopey.

She got a few ice chips and a cherry popsicle. We were sure to remove all wood from Sam's vicinity when she finished it.

These are the sticks the doctor removed from my baby's tibialis anterior. They look to me like they'd support popsicles of their own.



And this is what her leg looked like when she woke up:
Oh, but the excitement doesn't end there. We knew that she would be spending the night, to get a jump and a boost on the antibiotics to clear up the infection that Wooden Nastiness had created. We were prepared to have her sleeping at the hospital hooked up to an IV. What we didn't realize (and were not told about until she was in recovery) was that the pediatric unit is at the hospital across town. So the Medic Team came...

And transferred her to the East campus. I had to sign to have the child shipped. Weirdness. Of course, we got a picture of her first (and hopefully only) ambulance ride. Doesn't she look thrilled?


The bumpy ride from the West campus was entertaining/embarrassing.
EMT #1 (girl with ponytail in pic): What did she have?
ME: Splinter.
EMT #2 (dude without glasses in pic): Wha-huh?
ME: She had a splinter. Two of them, actually. Doctor Hussein just removed one that was over half an inch long and one that was just less than half an inch. They were in her muscle. For about two months. Without complaint.
EMT #1: Oh-Em-Gee!
ME: Right?!
EMT #2: Tough kid!
ME: She's like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
EMT#3 (with glasses): Ha-HA! "It's just a flesh wound! Come back and fight!"
ME: Exactly.

We got her into her room where they scanned the UPC code on her bracelet and told me she would cost an arm and the other leg and then put a little anti-theft device on her ankle that we were promised would sound off many an alarm in the event of her sleepwalking, attempted escape or kidnapping. Let it be known that you can't pull a Dine and Dash at Genesis East without serious repercussions...or at least a heck of a lot of noise.

My mother helped her get settled in. In the picture below, Sam is reading her the list of movies. Apparently the hospital gets Netflix. I don't even want to know how much they'll charge for that on our bill. $140 for The Jungle Book 2?! WTH?!

After school, her sisters came to hang out. There was at least some semblance of normalcy again with all of them in one room. No one argued, which was super-nice.

Madison's 12th birthday was that same day, and more than slightly overshadowed by the Splinterectomy, the poor girl. She took it really well and let Sam's recovery take the front seat that day. She's a great kid.

Weird fact #68: I gave birth to Madison 12 years earlier just two floors up from where we were sitting. She declined my offer to re-enact the moment of her birth. *humph* Some kids just don't care about history.

Thankfully, she had already celebrated with a Slumber Party of Awesomeness the Friday before. Still, we got her a little something for her actual birthday. See that little brown thing in her hand? It's a gift card. She's texting her friend to tell her about it. The purple and green blankets are gifts for their newly decorated bedroom and we just decided to make them hospital/birthday gifts for each of them.


Sam liked the hospital food, at least the stuff that Madison didn't sample.

Operation is THE game to play when you're in the hospital. I think the pencil (Writer's Cramp) in his forearm is about the same size as the larger of the two splinters removed from Sam's leg.

Weird fact #99: Operation dude's name is "Cavity Sam".

I laughed my face off at that. Samantha didn't find it as amusing.


And finally she slept. The book you see there is Curious George Goes To The Hospital, which her Aunt Jennie brought her a few days before surgery. Seems that George eats a wooden puzzle piece and has to have surgery to get it out of his little monkey belly. Wood is the debbil.

And the next day, she was ready to roll...posing with the candy that Uncle Marky brought her the night before. Notice the Anti Theft Device on her ankle. They removed it and discharged her shortly after this pic was taken and we were able to get her dressed and head home. She was thrilled at the idea that she would get to ride in a wheelchair (but the ambulance ride had her completely unimpressed).

We'll close with a picture of Sam on the mend. This is her "Can we play Just Dance on the Wii" face:


Um...No.

Pictures From Hell - A Holiday Photo

"...Hallelujah! Holy Shit! Where's the Tylenol?!"
Clark W. Grizwold

I wanted to take a nice picture of my kids for a holiday card. That's all. I didn't want to chisel their likeness into stone. I didn't want them to sit and pose while I painted a reproduction of the Nativity. A sweet photograph of my offspring grinning merrily at the camera was all I was looking for.

The dog was not in the room, Sugar Daddy wasn't mugging for the camera, no cats were running in and out of the room chasing one another or their tails or an imaginary mouse. It was just the spawn, the tree and me and it went something like this:

Sam, sit there for a minute and let me check the lighting for this shot. *click*

Okay, that's not bad. That's All That and a bag of - can we lose the bag of chips, please? Thanks, honey. Okay let's try it one more time. Ready? Say "Cheese".
Sam: "CHEESE." *click*

*sigh* Dammit! Go away, John!

*enter rest of spawn*
Okay, is everyone ready? Good.
1, 2, 3. *click*

Good! Now, Samantha, when you say "cheese", can you sit really still? You were a bit blurry in that one. Let's try again, but this time when I say "3" everyone freeze.

1, 2, 3. *click*
No, Sam. Not REALLY "freeze". Just smile and sit still, okay? Again... 1,2, *click*

"WE WEREN'T READY!"

I was trying to be sneaky about it. I guess that didn't work. Just look at me and smile, will you? *click*
*click*
"She farted! GROSS, SAM! MO-ommm!"

Samantha, sit. STILL.
Madison: "Ha ha, you got in trouble! Ha ha! UNGH!"
*click*
*click*
Lily, thank you for continuing to smile throughout this incredible mayhem.
Okay, people. Let's just work with your hyperactivity and try a crazy picture. Shall we? Let's give it a whirl.

1, 2, 3 *click*

*click*


Nope. Okay, bad idea. And you all still have to sit relatively still.
Again...WAIT! STOP! Samantha, sit still! Girls, stop TICKLING HER, THAT DOESN'T HELP!
*click*

And then Lily had had enough.*click*

*click**click*
Where the hell are your sisters?! Oh, good Lord.


Lily! Stop choking your sister! Get back over here and let's just DO this damned thing before I completely lose it with you people!! NOW SMILE!!
Really, Sam?! Now you're incapable of smiling?! After all that?!
*click*

Oh, forget it!! I'll work with whatever else I've got! Get out of my sight!! Go to bed NOW, all of you!!! THERE WILL BE NO CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR!!!






Please note: 
**When the children were nestled all snug in their beds, their adventure but a memory, I cleared my head and transferred the carnage from camera to computer, I think I managed to piece together a holiday photo that truly captures their essence:

So yeah. Happy Holidays and all that junk. :P