Don't type THAT.

He's only five, but today I realized it was time to put a parental control block on the computer. Because when you have a child who is so excited about learning to sound out words that he's doing random Google searches of his favorite ones, bad things can happen.

I know, because one of them happened today. I woke up from my brief but restless nap with Katherine to the sound of him cackling breathlessly, as only five-year-old boys seem able to do. I only caught a glimpse before he closed the window (we have rules about not doing anything on the computer outside of Playhouse Disney games, the occasional rousing round of Road Rash circa-1989 Atari, and a charming but annoying site called Learn to Read!) But what I saw just didn't look right, y'all. It didn't look like anything that somebody who was a baby just the other day should be looking at.

I mean, sounding out words is far from foolproof. In a world where he might type in words he knows and get results that are far from child- or even regular-people-friendly, you have to be careful. Alex might someday type in "race" looking for some cool cars and end up on a cyber-gathering place for skinheads. And then there are the words he almost knows. He recently sounded out the word "cake" in a book and ... well, I'm not even going there. ("Hm, Alex ... what other sound can "a" make?)

It's a dangerous place, this pass-through ramshackle town called Almost Literate. And of course I say this with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek (though it occurs to me that THAT phrase could bring up some Google ghastliness), but I did have Steven set a parental control on Google searches.

He decided it was working when he typed in "boob" and got no results. Oy.

And another weekend has come and gone. I spent it enjoying my family: watching bad movies with Steven, painting pictures with Alex and watching him engage in all his weird little-kid doings, like putting all his stuffed animals in a plastic bag and arranging them in the middle of the trampoline. Putting his pants on backward and then telling me, when I pointed it out, that he likes them that way. Insisting on wearing his fleece-lined waterproof jacket to the grocery store because "it might rain, you never know."

And of course I spent plenty of time holding Katherine (a lot; she didn't want to be put down much this weekend), kissing rolls of baby fat and acting like an utter fool to make her laugh.

Tomorrow it's back to the new normal. I'm good with that.