His Thing…It’s A Thing.

Boy Moms: Please tell me I’m not the only one. I don’t think I have gone an entire day without having to talk about my son’s penis since the day he discovered it. I put the day he discovered his “manland” in his baby-book, mostly as a joke, not realizing that it truly was a turning point in our lives.

Honestly, even before he was born we had to talk about his penis. We left our 20 week sonogram with a tiny picture of a tiny baby with a tiny….umbilcal cord directly in front of its genitalia. I’m the kind of mom that felt like she NEEDED to know her child’s sex. I behaved like a bratty teenager for the first few post-sonogram hours, emotionally ate through the next three, and eventaully cried myself to sleep that night. In no way did I handle myself with grace or dignity. I spent the next 24 hours talking to my belly about why mommy needed him/her to let go of their “modest is hottest” mentality and giving step by step instructions for how to move that cord out of the way. I was barely halfway through my pregnancy and our conversations were already revolving around his junk.

When our midwife mentioned that we would need to start discussing circumcision, I looked at her and laughed. “A bit of a hot topic?” she asked. To say the least. Within the first hour we knew we were having a boy my husband commented, “Oh crap, now we have to talk about circumcising again.” Yes, again. We had been bickering about circumcising our hypothetical baby since before we were even married. When we found out I was pregnant, we called a cease-fire on circumcision discussions until we knew the baby’s gender. That cease-fire was officially over.

And thus began the biggest of our penis problems. I prepared a power point, showed pictures, and had him watch informational videos. I looked up worldwide and local data. We agreed that he would have 51% of the vote (he got the extra percent for having experience, one might call it “the penis percent”), but I got to plead my case until I was blue in the face. It was clear that he truly understood my points, and I was shocked when he told me that he was actually starting to struggle with the decision. We hadn’t even seen the thing yet, and it was already dominating our conversations!

When our little man was a newborn, we worried about his penis. Was it normal? Were we cleaning it right? Was it about to pee on us? (Yes, the answer those first few weeks was always “yes”). Were his diapers giving him enough room? Being new to this whole dangling appendage thing, I had a lot of questions. How do you wipe front to back in this new 3-d terrain? Do I need to aim it somewhere before I put on his diaper? Can you just take over bath-time…I don’t know the rules here.

Eventually we sorted it all out and the penis-talk died down. That’s when it happened. He reached down one day and found it. There is was, in all its glory.

His life, and ours, were forever changed. Naked time went from being cute and playful to being a constant reminder of what your penis IS and is NOT for. These are the top 3 Penis Quotes that have actually come out of my mouth:

3- “Let’s clean something new, I think you’ve gotten that area as clean as it can possibly be.“

2- “Paint the bathtub, not your penis” (I kid you not, it was like his mission in life to have a blue penis)

1- “Apples are for eating, not for rubbing your penis on.“

And the one I say almost on loop Every. Single. Day. “Be gentle with it, you only get one.” For such a prized possession, you would think he would be a little kinder to the darn thing!

At this point, we talk about his penis so routinely that I forget normal people (like, say, people on a date in the booth behind you at dinner) find it shocking when you ask your husband, “Hey, do you think his biz-nas had an extra funk to it today?” or go into a hilarious story about his most recent naked-time adventures.

I’ve also added a fun new hobby to my resume: finding the perfect digital “sticker” to make his naked pictures social media appropriate! He’s playing with toys? Throw a Lego over that bad boy. He’s in the bathtub? We’ll just place this dolphin riiiiiight here.

A little re-size, a little rotation, and voila: that x-rated photo is now a solid PG-13.

Soon enough this phase of parenting will end, and talking about penises will once again be taboo. Until then we’re embracing the hilarity, laughing off the awkwardness, and choosing to “smile instead of frown when we talk about down-town”.