What a dirty trick!

It is! Truly rotten!

I probably shouldn’t be laughing so hard…

Your Friday Smile

I often accuse my newbie walkers of “reeling like a drunken sailor”. Someone else saw the same thing, and took it to creative new lengths…

Eek! The drunken, ravenous Godzilla baby! Run, run for your lives!

NOT in the job description

Just NOT. Who makes up these ridiculous, disgusting things for mothers to do? As if there isn’t enough of an unavoidable ew-factor to parenting, we have to make stuff up???

You’re not seriously suggesting, Charmin, that I inspect my toddler’s anus for toilet paper leftovers? Because, you know, my child does not have a cute, furry butt, and the leftovers would not be speckled here and there, all white and puffy-dry. And they certainly couldn’t be removed with a whisk and dust-pan. No, what I’d be faced with — assuming I were demented enough to go searching for it (talk about buying trouble) — would be much, much less appealing. Much.

But somewhere, you know there are mothers buying into this notion… if not enough to actually do such a disgusting thing, then enough to feel guilty that they don’t.

Ugh.

This one threw me, but I know there are more. I recall the daycare parent at a centre I once worked in who expected the staff to pick her son’s nose for him, presumably because she did it herself. Have you run across any other gross and/or ridiculour expectations of mothers?

Smile!

Very cute, a teeny bit corny, but only in the nicest of ways. Perfect for my rainy Monday morning.

Did you smile?

Sing, sing a song

Aren’t they great? The harmonies! The rhythms! The (squashed in the desks) dancing! It seems clear that this is a school event or choir or club of some sort, and I know we have those here, too, but it got me thinking about singing for the sheer joy of it — because this music, it just bubbles with joy and life.

I am closer to 50 than 40. I sing all the time. So does my husband. But you rarely see children (over the age of maybe five) spontaneously burst into song, even in the privacy of their own homes.

Maybe it’s because my husband and I were raised in churches, and in our generation, in our churches, you sang, you didn’t just sit there and watch the choir do it. (My church, unlike my husband’s, didn’t even have a choir.) Possibly because far fewer people attend church these days, the singing/non-singing divide seems to have a strong generational divide — older people sing, younger people just listen (or at best, maybe, rarely, sing along). Or maybe church attendance has nothing whatever to do with it. But for whatever reason, I see younger people as being far less likely to sing, sing, sing.

Do you agree? Does anyone else find it sad that North American kids hardly ever sing for fun?

It’s sunny! I’m outta here!

And you think I’M patient… How long, do you think, did it take to plan and then manipulate all those teeny sticky squares? Amazing.

You can enjoy that while the tots and I head to the park in the first sunny day in about two weeks! See you later!

Making babies

Boy, I sure did it the hard way!

I guess this woud be called childburst?