LN. Hahah hey! I'm back! This is another stupid thing that has absolutely nothing to do with Inuyasha other than the names of them. Aaanyways, I did this as a prompt for a contest, and I really really want to win! BLAH!

Your toddler has found him/herself a new playtoy. One you don't approve of. At all. What toy have they discovered? How do you convince your child that perhaps this isn't the best thing for a baby to be playing with?

I, Sango, rolled over on the bed, shoving my face into the pillow, my head throbbing. Headache. Turning over again, I placed my hand on my forehead, feeling for a temperature. Please, please, please? I drew it back, then put it back on, then drew it back again. "No such luck." I guess work was still my agenda for today. I looked upwards, trying to buy some time before I had to get up and get dressed, brush, floss, comb, shower. Blegh. Hey look. The ceiling. What a pretty ceiling. I bet it was a ceiling before I was born! Wow. That? one professional and persevering ceiling. Haha. Personification. Which is also a 'P' word. I shook my head, disturbed at myself. "Wow. I need to talk to the bloody psychiatrist again." A squeal of delight alerted me to the toddler sitting on the bed next to me. Holding?

A condom.

"Where did you get that?" and where the hell did your father put that so you found it? I asked, sitting up suddenly, then falling back into the depths of my bed, as I had the sensation of my brain knocking against the front of my skull. "Oooh. My head. Urgh. Ooh. Ow."

The child made no notion to answer, he just rolled over and cooed with excitement. Grabbing the both ends of the condom, he stretched it way out, then shoved it back to normal proportions.

I sighed. Just my luck. I turned over again, trying to ignore the entire thing. The baby. The condom. The headache.

I was in my bedroom. (No, I was doing nothing involving a condom. I was just sleeping. ALONE. THANKYOUVERYMUCH.) The bedroom was the only place in the apartment that was not a wreck after last night. That is, it was locked, so my drunken friends couldn't trash it and a certain sleazeball (MIROKU- you jerk.) couldn't get back in till tomorrow. A simple bed, a chair and table and chest of drawers were the room? only adornments, but I never thought it needed much. The walls were still waiting to be painted (I was trying to find a contractor to do it, but I was running out of options, so I figured I would just bribe some of my neighbors to help me with it) so they were still a hideous shade of puke-green. I sat up and stared at the child, clucking my tongue in a matter-of-fact way. He was going to have to give it up. And I knew that giving it up would mean lots of crying and boo-hooing. The radio was on, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the bed post, letting the noise wash over me in waves for a short moment, then opened my eyes and stared dead straight at the little monstrosity I had created. "Here. Give it to mommy. I lunged over to grab it from the little monster's clutches saying, "You don't need that until your older. And even then you're not getting any. ABSTAIN."

"Mine!" He rolled over, and clambered off the bed, falling to the floor with an "oomph". Crawling extremely fast for something that still wet his diapers, he scampered towards the exit of the bedroom, gurgling nonsense words to himself, like "orange" and "no want".

"This is not a good day." I decided as I chased after him, finally scooping him up as he ran into the door. "You don't want to play with that. It's Yucky. Yucky. It's like balloons. Remember, we don't like balloons. Especially after you sat on that one and I had to take you to the doctor to get it surgically removed. Why are you looking at me that way? STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY! I KNOW WE'RE BLOOD RELATED BUT GOOD GOD! YOU'RE TWO! And holding a condom. Where's that blasted psychiatrist's number?" I reached over and yanked on the protective rubber tubie. "Hey, listen. You don't want that. As I said. It's for grown ups." I yanked again, causing the child to roll over on his stomach and squeal with delight. "No, no, no, no, no. That's not a happy thing. It's a yucky thing. Say it with me. 'yuuuuucky'. 'Yuuuuuuuuuucky'. Come on."

"Toy!" He said, rolling over onto his back and kicking voraciously with his feet. "Toy! Toy, toy, toy!" He repeated himself over again as the radio suddenly screamed out a Toys R Us jingle.

"No it's not a toy." I said, throwing my pillow over the radio. The jingle was getting exceedingly annoying. "Well, yeah, I guess if you think about it that could be a toy. But it's not a toy for you. It's a toy for mommy. Yes. Right. Not for you. Now let go." I reached over and gave a solid yank with my left hand, as my right was trapped underneath his buttocks.

The toddler wouldn't give. So I eventually just let go, frustrated. Why me? Why me? Why can't the blasted psychiatrist have these problems with his damn kids? WHY? WHY! Just who gave that to you? He pointed at my chest of drawers, cooing ecstatically. Frowning, I opened the lowest cabinet and peered in. "Ah. Well. You weren't supposed to find those.

"Tell me!" He exclaimed, tugging back the condom and holding it to his chest like his first born son. Which was ironic, because if he had a condom, he wasn't gonna get a son. But his pituitary gland was still dormant, so maybe it didn't matter.

"Fine." I said, even though he probably had no idea as to what he was saying, or what I was saying, or if either of us knew what the other was saying, we wouldn't be in this situation, because what we had was a failure to communicate. Yes. Exactly. "Okay. When a mommy and daddy love each other very much and there's nothing good on TV and like, they're horny? I stopped. This was not the way to tell a two-year-old the facts of life. "OKAY! Well, after they talk about it for a while, they call the magical princess who controls all the storks in the land." Storks? Good God, falling back to the old stand-by for mothers of America who need to find an excuse to their kids of how the hell they got there?"And he gives them each a bag of magical baby supplies! They take the bag in their beaks and give it to a mommy and daddy who want to have babies. Inside the bag is a seed and a little tadpole and a small metal hand to put the baby into the mommy's belly." I winced. Gee. I am one crappy storyteller. Why couldn't Miroku be here with his innate ability to make stuff up? With a sudden burst of inspiration, I grabbed open another drawer and pulled out a back scratcher. "See? I still have it. Now yeah, the little tadpole eats the seed and turns into a little tiny baby. The daddy puts the baby in his p-- little metal hand and puts it in the mommy's belly. After nine months, the baby pops out through the belly button. Right. Okay. So. How much of that did you understand?" I looked at him hopefully. Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing after all! Maybe we had really connected, and we were destined to have a strong mother-son relationship! Maybe.

A squeal of delight told me that he hadn't understood a thing, he just listened to me blab on about tadpoles and back scratchers. "Oh well you suck." I said disgustedly. Sitting back down on the bed. "Maybe you'd enjoy a bloody cucumber to go with it." (This is a regional joke, so you probably won't get it. It's about the How-To-Put-A-Condom-On-A-Cucumber-Health-Video they want to show in the high schools in my area. But it's funny! It really is! ) He just blinked at me and started chewing on the condom. "No, stop that. You have no idea how people will think I'm raising you if you do that in public."

He didn't listen; instead, he squirmed away from me and ran underneath another pillow, squealing with delight and engaging in conversations with inanimate objects.

I moaned. My headache was getting worse, and I thought I was getting hot flashes. This was not the condition I wanted to argue in. Feeling a dull pain in my abdomen, I realized why I felt so wasted, even though I hadn't drank at all the night before. Suddenly, the room spun out of control, and I ran out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom, trying to keep the bile that rose in my throat at bay long enough to poise myself over the toilet, a rug jumping to life underneath my feet and sailing off as I went, propelled by the force of my feet hitting the floor. No wonder I was using bloody so much in my conversations this morning. I thought feebly, when I had finished throwing up, and performing my feminine hygiene duties. I hung over the toilet for a moment, thinking how cool it was in the bathroom compared to the rest of the apartment. Why was PMS so violent for me? I flushed the toilet and washed my face, reveling in getting some of the grit out from around my nose. Feeling rather refreshed and in all around about 70 percent normal instead of 10 percent functional, which was a welcome improvement. Struck by an idea that should have come before, I opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed an item wrapped in green crinkly plastic, before heading back into the hall and falling forward into the bedroom, where my living headache was waiting for me.
I stared at him for a minute, and then said, "Alright. You and I are going to have to start compromising sooner or later, and I'd rather start now than waiting a good solid decade to when you're going to be sneaking out to buy said item." I pointed to the condom. "So here. Let's trade." I waved a menstrual napkin in front of the child's face. "See the pretty green plastic wrapping? See how it crinkles? See how fun it is?" I crooned, watching with inner relief as the toddler slowly adverted his gaze from the condom, to the napkin. "Why don't we give that to mommy? I snatched up the condom in one swift action and dropped the napkin in front of the child. "There we go. Now if anybody comes in and sees you playing with that, they won't have any problems, as I am female and I can explain a napkin, but not necessarily a condom." Grinning, I shoved the condom in my pocket and fell back onto the bed. "Hey. This isn't half bad. You know what, kiddo? Mommy is very happy. Want to know why?" He stared blankly. "Well, you probably don't care, but, Mommy is happy because she got that icky yucky gross toy away from you, she doesn't have to call the psychiatrist because the psychotic feelings and the anxiety and the fact that I wanted to kill the pizza delivery guy the other day were all just PMS and, most importantly? I let my grin grow absolutely predatory and pulled the covers over my feet. "I'll call in today and say that since I have severe menstrual cramps, I can't go to work today. Hahaha." Looking over towards my son, I placed my hand on his head and played with his hair affectionately. "See? Everything turned out okay. And I thought I was going crazy. Isn't Mommy silly? Silly, silly." I turned over to face him, and pulled him closer to me. "Well. At least something bad didn't happen because of that blasted condom."

"Dondom! Dondom! Condom!"

"Shit. Just shit."

So there it is. Tell me what you think. xP