First, a disclaimer: I’d never recommend that you lean over the tub with a cell phone like the… [more]
There are eleventy billion articles about why Disneyworld is awesome. Here's one about the ways in … [more]
Don't look so sick now, do they??
One morning, two brothers woke up with sore voices and feet. The brothers’ preschool specifically stated that anyone with sore feet must stay home for three weeks. The family played hide and seek. Daddy hid at work.
For breakfast, the brothers wanted waffles bagels chicken nuggets. After breakfast, they played jump on your brother until he cries. Then they hit each other with monkeys.
Egyptologists
Dear Henry,
As I write this letter, you’ve not quite learned to read. Your mom says you’re working on it; even though you begin every school day with a group-chant of the alphabet, you pore over your Egyptology books when you come home. You’ve parlayed your recognition of words like “Osiris” into the ability to read key words on labels and signs. I also heard about how you witnessed an incident in which three of your classmates took turns stomping the lunchbox belonging to a fourth child, who, himself, also took a few stomps. When I heard this, I knew had to write this letter.
Like everyone else, I’m addicted to Facebook. I update my status with carefully-crafted, pithy bon mots, links to my writing, or baby photos when I’m at a loss for words and just want to bait my friends into boosting my ego (every time I log on to Mark Zuckerberg’s Digital Crack Den, I feel like Sally Field at the 1985 Oscars. “You LIKE me? You really LIIIIIIIIIIIKE MEEEEEEEEEEE?!?”)
Babies in mullet wigs: shameless like-baiting.
I compulsively scroll through my news feed, looking not just for social news but for NEWS news. Facebook has become my CNN, which sounds sad until you actually read CNN and realize that it has become nothing more than a lame Facebook wall full of inane web postings like “Marilyn Monroe officially joins Twitter” and “Five Takes on French Fries.”
Anyway.
When I joined Facebook at 27, I thought I was too old. When it launched back in the Olden Times, Facebook was only for college students, so I figured I’d missed the boat. Now, though, I think it needs a legal age like cigarettes and booze. Because the streams of my li’l Facebook friends are FUCKED. UP.
My husband and I once walked this planet as part of the species known as the Smug Parent-To-Be. All-knowing, we wielded The Family Edict on just how things would be in our house. Our children would always act in love and no games involving weapons would be allowed. We would have children that only knew the ways of peace, altruism, and a gentle regard for family members.
We trusted in the belief that if you raise a child to hug every tree and with a spirit of communal living, you were guaranteed a home where birds, butterflies, even Cat Stevens himself would come knocking on your door, wanting a ride on your peace train.
I guess what’s meant to be is meant to be, whether or not, by all outside appearances, it should have been a complete and epic failure.
OMG, FAIQA!! WHAT. IS. PDES?!?! It means “Puppy Dog Eyes Syndrome.” Failure to immunize can result in the following: shame, guilt, repulsion, anger, general irritation, hives, itching and children past appropriate ages sleeping on top of you in the middle of the night. I’m proud to say that after six years of using a specific…
Before having children, people make all kinds of declarations about how they will behave as parents and what they will and will not allow their hypothetical children to do. This is called tempting fate. You could come up with the craziest scenario–one that defies the laws of probability–and, somehow, you will be faced with that…
The Backfired Best Intentions series is dedicated to those who have learned that the road to hell is paved with endless pages of parenting magazines. She is a rosebud incarnate in her tutu of soft pink tulle, a chubby cherub dipped in lycra. She is, she insists, a ballerina. She performs for everyone, everywhere she…
This childhood drawing of mine hangs above my son’s changing table: I’ll give you a second to click and enlarge it, so you can see the word emerging from the big floating head’s mouth. You’re not seeing things. It says, simply, “FUCK.” I was four years old.
Taking care of sick toddlers is a pain, but it helped me figure out how the universe works.
