CLICK HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Sunday, January 23, 2011

11 lessons any parents should read before considering having children

My sister-in-law forwarded this to me. It was written by a friend of hers. I laughed so hard I almost had tears in my eyes. Accurate indeed!

11 lessons any parents should read before considering having children

Lesson 1.

1.Go to the grocery store.

2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

New shelves in my daughter's room

Wow! Has it been a long time, or what? Good grief. So, in keeping with the title of this blog, I'm sure nobody cares, but here are some pics of the shelves I painted for my little 4-year-old girl. I always hear about these great deals everyone else gets, and finally got one myself. These shelves were in the Clearance aisle at Michael's for only $3 each! I just used acryllic paint and painted a bold color first (one green and one dark red), then painted over that with antique white and sanded. On the top I just mod podged some scrapbook paper cut to size, then put two layers of varnish over it.
My only beef is if you look close (you can't see it in the pics) you can see the seam where the two papers meet. And on a note of awwwww... those flowers are the first flowers my hubby gave me when we were dating. Everyone together now... awwwwwww. :)

Saturday, January 1, 2011

"Pathfinder" by Orson Scott Card

Pathfinder (Serpent World, #1)Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Completely engrossing! It's so wonderful to have 2 novels of Card's come out that I love, considering the previous few had been somewhat of a let down. This is being marketed as YA and I love that he doesn't dumb it down. It has time travel in it, but instead of ignoring the paradoxes and complications of time travel, it embraces them in wonderfully circuitous conversations. It was definitely a page turner for me and I look forward to the next installment.



View all my reviews

"Hidden Empire" by Orson Scott Card

Hidden EmpireHidden Empire by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Hallelujah! Card is back! Skip "Empire" and go straight to "Hidden Empire"! Trust me, I've forgotten most of what was in "Empire" other than there was an assasination attempt on the President (which was successful, I think) and the U.S. came close to a bloody civil war between blue and red states. And, yes, the whole book was just as contrived as it sounds, but mildly entertaining.

Anyhow, the point is, "Hidden Empire" is far more rife with Card's best tool - the moral/ethical dilemma. A deadly disease breaks out in Africa. Do you quarentine Africa? How do you sell that to the public? What would somebody's motivations be for doing that? And that's just the first of many.

I cared about all the characters in this one. Also, it managed to make me cry! Always a good sign for a book (much more difficult in a book setting than a movie).



View all my reviews