Life With Superheroes

Have you ever wondered what life was like for Superman's mom? (Ok, please don't correct me...there is probably some part of the comic book that explained that he didn't have a mom, or some other detail that I didn't learn by gaining my entire superhero knowledge from watching The Super Friends on Saturday mornings growing up.) Anyway, my theory is that it was probably tricky to parent Superman, or WonderWoman - what with all their abilities to leap tall buildings etc. I would imagine that those tots would have been a handful.

I kind of know what it is like.

Soren isn't able to shoot webs from his wrist like Spiderman, or breath underwater like Aquaman, but, dang, that kid has a superhuman sense of smell.

And he doesn't get it from a stranger.

When Peter was a boy, his parents quickly discovered that he could smell things that the average child couldn't smell. The story goes (according to Peter) that this special gift resulted in him helping his parents identify the exact spot in the house where the cat had peed so that they could get the smell out.

I personally think this gift is more of a curse. I will quite happily eat rotten ketchup and not notice that there is any problem whatsoever. Makes me very easy to satisfy in terms of house cleaning and eating. But Peter...and now Soren...poor guys, they suffer if anyone in their proximity has consumed garlic within the past 72-hours (I did brush my teeth, I promise!)

I cannot even begin to tell you how often I hear the telltale Peter sniffing sound which means that he's activating the schnozz to detect some detail in life about which I would have otherwise forever remained oblivious.

Soren was about 2 1/2 when I first noticed that he said "What's that smell?" more often that most children. And it wasn't just when I was burning dinner. Maybe I'd have a missing gym sock that fell out of my backpack under my car seat. Or maybe the wind has shifted to a westwardly direction and the oak trees instead of the evergreen trees are dropping their scent on the breeze (I'm just making stuff up now, but I think you get the point: like father, like son.)

We got new carpet last week. Peter was in heaven. We've both hated the carpet from the minute we bought the house eight years ago. It was ragged, stained and ugly (my reasons for hating it.) Peter always thought our house was stinky because there was one spot where a cat had peed literally a decade ago (his reason for hating it.) He Febreeze'd it until I considered buying stock in that company. But we just never made it a high enough priority to get new carpet. Until now.

So, last week we all were happy. I have fluffy, not stained carpet. And Soren announced "Mom, our house smells great!"