This morning, my son and Alexa had an exchange that reminded me of another one that took place last October.

Today

My son loves reptiles.

He is also a fan of asking Alexa to play music.

This morning the two collided when he asked Alexa to play an anaconda song.

Son: “Alexa, please play a anaconda song.”

“Alex: “Playing Anaconda.”

Some sort of Sir Mix A Lot Anaconda remix came on that started with “My anaconda don’t like none unless you got buns hun.”

Son: “What? What did he say?”

Me: “UT oh.” I stand up to make my way to our Alexa for re-direction.

Son: “Mom! Mom! Mom! Wait! Don’t talk to her yet. Why would an anaconda only like buns?” he starts cracking up. “I mean, have you ever seen a snake with a boodie?”

Me: “Alexa, play the banana bread song.”

Son: “Mom! No! I need to find out why the anaconda even knows about butts. That’s just silly.”

Last October

Do you know what line comes after, “Whatcha gonna do with that big fat butt?”.

Not me. I had no clue.

Admittedly, I haven’t been hip to pop culture these days and I’m extremely deficient in regular adult conversations. My life has drastically shifted from talking to adults, both socially and professionally, to almost exclusively talking to children. I’ve been taking this parenting thing super seriously trying to juggle everyone and their needs. It turns out, when there are three individual little kid needs and one big husband need, the overall schedule gets booked up pretty quickly.

Also, I want to try my best –whatever that is, because I know I’m going to get walloped when my oldest enters middle school.  But, because of my current mom cave state, I’ve missed out on a ton of pop culture and social behavior that’s totally acceptable these days. My current exposure to the outside world is the news in the car on my way to whatever kid appropriate activity has been deemed most beneficial for meaningful development.

My son sang “whatcha gonna do” to me after he watched a seven second video of a cat wiggling to the lyric on YouTube. At that point I thought maybe we should just take away YouTube, but I persisted. Instead of quitting, I googled “how to place strict parental controls on YouTube?”

After a few months of watching and playing with said parental controls I realized there is absolutely no way to block enough content to ever make it appropriate. So now, we are down to a very specific list of programming, and everything else is on automatic technology lock down. Just in case you aren’t familiar, automatic technology lock-down means taking all technology away, which is like telling your child they have to choose between having their legs or arms. So generally, an effective threat. Obviously, I don’t have a good handle on YouTubing or children. But, I digress…

“Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle.” He giggles and sings it over again. “Mom! Mom! Listen! It goes, whatcha gonna do with that big fat butt? Wiggle. Wiggle. Wiggle.”

“I’m not sure I like that sentence.” I scrunch my nose and can’t decide what to think. Maybe I’m just being ridiculous, it’s just an adorable fat cat shaking his rump to the beat. But why is that sentence even necessary in our lives?

Lucky for me, I have a twenty-something cousin who flew out from Baltimore to help me turn my three-year-old daughter into a trampoline for Halloween. Yep, you read that right. My kid was dead stuck on wanting to BE a trampoline. Along with that goal, which we nailed, my cousin also taught me a few things about the planet today…

For instance, “whatcha gonna do with that big fat butt …. wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” is not just an inappropriate seven second cat dance on YouTube. It is also a Jason Derulo song that is well known (both the song and the singer).

To be honest, I wasn’t sure where I was going with this post, but I think it’s fairly obvious now. I need to plan a night out where I can wiggle, wiggle, wiggle; just like the fat gray cat in the YouTube video.