She Likes Big Butts and I Want to Die

My three year old daughter’s fascination with butts rivals any man’s love of booty. She likes to talk butts and she will not lie – and she always uses her Outdoors Voice. Her constant loud talk about butts and what they do is making me blush like a schoolgirl. So yes folks, in a nutshell, I’m a prude who is raising a miniature frat boy. Can you die from blushing too hard?

Take for instance her latest rendition of Old MacDonald:
Old MacDonald had a farm e-i-e-i-o
And on that farm he had a butt e-i-e-i-o
With a butt butt here and a butt butt there
Here a butt, there a butt EVERYWHERE A BUTT BUTT!

Or the talking butt game. Where she suddenly whips off the bottoms, bends over and grabs her cheeks a la Bart Simpson and makes her sweet tushy say: LOOK AT ME!

Or her favorite library / grocery store / any public place line of questioning that usually starts with “MOMMY – did you fart? Because it stinks in here and I think you have a really stinky butt.”

I’m cringing just thinking about our most recent visit to Starbucks. But wait! It gets better.

Let’s look at a recent incident in the pool change room (collective groan here because you know where I’m going). Gemma suddenly blurted out “MOM look at her butt! IT’S HUGE!” all while pointing at the woman who just walked by and stopped right next to us to dry her ample assets. If there was a time I wanted the ground to swallow me up, this was it. I nearly stuffed a towel in my daughter’s mouth because SHE KEPT TALKING but I blacked out before I could reach her pie hole. Next thing I remember we were outside the change room, half-dressed, damp, and running for the door.

Yes, I know that this is a well documented, though I’m sure debatable, phase of Freud’s stages of psychosexual development and she’s pretty much right on schedule with her butt fascination. But (butt?) that doesn’t make it any less painful from my parenting standpoint. In fact it adds to the pressure since Freud believed that depending on how parents/care-givers deal with this phase, a child can end up a slob for life or a totally uptight priss (yes I’m paraphrasing and now wondering exactly how did my parents deal with my toilet training?)

So at this point you are either rolling your eyes at me or nodding in recognition. And for those nodding in recognition, I need some assvice - I mean advice - on how not to stunt my daughter when she is so close to being completely potty-trained. How does a stick in the mud like me deal with this phase without turning my darling free-spirited daughter into Angela Martin? Because I can only take so much more of singing butt performances before I actually do die of embarrassment.

image from arum_lily76's flickr photostream