Feeling sluggish?

Today the boys were battling for control of the bubbles in the bathtub until I warned them one more fight would mean they both had to get out. A little while later I came back to spy on them and found them happily engaged in conversation.

Skyler greeted me in delight. "Mommy! Yook! We have syugs!"

There are a few things in the world that I hate passionately, and slugs are right up there at the top of the list. These "slugs" were harmless enough--the boys were just poking their fingers up through the bubbles in the bathtub--but it was still an alarmingly realistic imitation of slugs. Ew.

"Don't wowwy, Mommy." Skyler must have seen the look of distaste on my face at the mere mention of living blobs of slime. "We killed all the bad syugs. We onwy have nice, yittle baby syugs!" Great.

"See, Mommy," added Seth, wriggling his finger slugs, "dey are weally nice. Dey are kind and loving slugs." He introduced me to them by name (sorry, I've forgotten their slug names, but they were interesting), after which Skyler also introduced his by name.

"Dey were on our hands even before we got in da baff-tub," Skyler assured me. "And dey are going to stay wiv us. For weally in yife."

(This expression, "for really in life," is one of Skyler's current favorites, but its meaning is varied. I was pretty sure that in this case the imaginary slugs wouldn't be around for long--thankfully.)

But the slugs stayed around even after bathtime, carefully wending their way through sleeper sleeves and riding around the house on the boys' hands for a while. As I was scrubbing the bathroom floor later, Skyler came to me to talk more about his "syugs." Thankfully, it was because they had left. "Da syugs went to be wiv deir fwiends," he began. "Dey went to," he paused to think, "a syug house."

"That's wonderful," I said. "That's exactly where slugs should live."

"Yes," he agreed graciously. "In da syug house, dere are only nice baby syugs! No big, bad syugs."

"So there are no mommies and daddies in the slug house?" I asked. (Forgive me, I have nothing else to amuse me when I am scrubbing bathroom floors. Call it severe deprivation of intellectual stimulation.)

He thought about it carefully. "Well, when dey are hungwy, the mommy syugs come," he admitted. "But dere are no daddy syugs. But when dey get to heaven," he assured me, "den dere will be daddy syugs!"

"Dey are not bad syugs," Skyler concluded. "If they could fly, they would be bad. Wight, Mommy?"

I heartily agree.