Today my 9-year-old beat me at tic-tac-toe. I am getting dumber by the minute.

I recently discovered the hard way that I can no longer leave my 9-year-old alone with the internet. This may seem obvious to most people, but he has always been so good at staying on Study Island or SOL Pass and doing actual schoolwork. Until the day I came home from soccer practice and Tommy met me at the door.

“Something happened with the computer. I couldn’t figure out how to get it back on.” Now, something is always going wrong with the computer, so that was not suspicious. Until I opened the computer and found not just Study Island open, but also a graphic pornography site. Uh oh. Was my 9-year-old actually interested in pornography? How did he know it was on the internet? (Of course it’s obvious to the rest of us, but you don’t see much on Webkinz, his main area of internet expertise.) But then I checked out the name: boob.com.

Tommy was breastfed, unabashedly stared at his and his friends’ younger siblings while they nursed, and at 5, sighed deeply and told me, “Mommy, I love your boobies.” So I knew he was never going to be a leg man. But this was too much.

“Tommy, I need to talk to you about what I found on the computer.”

“Huh? What?”

“How did you find that web site?”

“I clicked on something on Study Island and that popped up.”

“Uh huh. Try again.”

“I was just typing a ‘B’ and that popped up.”

“Tommy.”

“Okay! (dejected sigh) I went to the place where you search for things and I typed in boob.” (He left out the part about not knowing how to close the site or reopen the computer once he slammed it shut. I managed not to laugh.) So I gave him the standard talk about what is appropriate and what is not, to come to me with questions, etc. The unfunny part of the story is that the site was VERY graphic, and he can’t unsee those things. After all, he just wanted to see a boob.

Guess he’ll just have to start stealing my Victoria’s Secret catalogs like his friends.

I was watching an episode of 16 & Pregnant when the kids came home from school. I decided to go ahead and finish watching, figuring it’s not too bad and they weren’t really paying attention anyway. Until the newborn cried, and 6-year-old Colleen made a beeline for the TV.

“Aw, a baby, he’s so cute! She’s so lucky!”

“Well, actually, she’s only 16, so she probably doesn’t feel very lucky.”

Colleen was incredulous. “You can have a baby at 16??? I can’t wait to get pregnant!”

Colleen is no longer allowed to leave the house.

I got carded today. I will shop at Wegman’s forever. Because that may very well be the last time I hear, “ID please.”

Please do not burst my bubble with that “they card everyone under 50″ crap.

Last week we were doing some dreaded spring cleaning in the kids’ rooms. As I went through Kaylee and Colleen’s book shelves, I heard the following exchange in Tommy’s room:

“OK, buddy, it looks like we got everything. Do you see anything else under there?”

“Just a few Legos and a dead fly.”

I mean, what else do you expect to find in a 9-year-old boy’s room?

Mike was driving the kids to a birthday party recently, and Kaylee and Colleen were arguing over who got tohold the Kelly Clarkson CD. (The car is a prime fighting arena; no matter what, there is always *something* to argue about.) Tommy, rather than fueling the fire (as is his expertise), decided to help the situation.

“Colleen, why don’t you hold the case on the way to the party, and Kaylee can hold it all the way home.” (This worked.)

“Wow, Tommy,” Mike marvelled, “That was a great compromise.”

“Yeah. I’m James Madison.”

“Whaaa?”

“You know, James Madison. The Great Compromiser.”

As Mike praised Tommy’s applied knowledge (and I breathed a sigh of relief about how Tommy’s New Nation test went), Colleen thought for a moment. Then she blurted out, “OK. Then I’m Kelly Clarkson!”

Colleen came home from first grade last week with some exciting news. Breathlessly, she told me that one of her classmates got stitches! In her forehead!

“And Mommy, you’ll never guess how she got them. Her friend accidentally hit her in the head with a baseball bat — a METAL baseball bat!” Seriously, exactly that inflection.

To which Tommy scoffed, “Yeah, right, on accident. (Mimes smashing a bat down on someone’s head.) Oops, sorry.” (Poor Mack!)

I explained how accidents can happen, but won’t it be funny if Aidan ever meets this girl? Who would use the pick-up line on whom? Those dasterdly METAL baseball bats.

I am suffering from the post-Oscar blues.

I love the Oscars. I love trying to see as many nominated films as possible, even though this year it meant 4 double features in the theaters (a new record for Mike and me). Although there are always duds that I can do without (hello Il Divo and A Serious Man, and how can we forget that Norbert was once nominated for an Oscar?),  I am often surprised by movies I thought I wouldn’t like or hadn’t even heard of (Once was a definite gem for me). I love the guessing game before the nominees are announced (we wisely chose District 9 and Inglorious Basterds; not so much for 500 Days of Summer) and the rushing game after they are announced (OK, we’ll drive to Potomac Mills for Precious, but I will not go to Pennsylvania for The Lovely Bones). And although it was never a serious plan, Mike and I pondered aloud if we thought the kids could sit through The Last Station if we bought them a ton of candy and let them bring ipods. (This was the day before the Oscars; we were in a complete frenzy.)

Now usually after the winners are announced, I cannot wait to cleanse my palate with a few mindless shoot-em-ups or rom-coms — cheesy dialogue, explosions; definitely no subtitles. So I should have been thrilled when the next movie to show up in the mailbox was G.I. Joe. But while Mike and Tommy enjoyed it, I just couldn’t watch it.

In the words of the beloved Doug Dorsey, I don’t downshift that fast.

Kaylee and Colleen were painting a shoebox today to use for a Valentine box. I told them to please be careful with their clothes, because even though they were using washable paint, sometimes that stuff still doesn’t come out. Which started an argument about who should be MORE careful because they have more white on their shirt, and therefore more capacity for paint mishaps.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. “Just paint! There is no need to argue!”

Kaylee looked at me, confused. “But Mom, we can paint WHILE we argue.”

Seriously, they better be back in school tomorrow.

I am a sudoku snob. For the un-addicted, sudoku is a logic puzzle where you have to place the numbers 1 through 9 once and only once in each column, row and square on the board. I have done these puzzles for so long that I only do the puzzles that are 5 out of 5 or 6 out of 6 on the difficulty level.

The other week in the Post I found a 6-star sudoku I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. At first it seemed too easy; all the numbers were just falling into place. Until I hit a block. Really, I just needed one more number to set the dominos falling, but I just couldn’t get it. Now this happens every so often, there are puzzles I simply can’t solve. But it bugs the CRAP out of me. So after a couple days of my sulking and complaining about my lack of brain power, Mike calmly askd,

“Would you like me to get you the towel of shame? Or would you rather punch yourself in the head?”

Ouch. Tommy, my apologies for screwing you up so soundly.