Friday, August 27, 2010
Faint Similarity
What really cracks me up is I first put in the Not So Simple post and got H. P. Lovecraft. (Not that I've ever read or ever in a million years would want to read H. P. Lovecraft.) Hmmm, I thought, what if I put in a real horror post? So I substituted the You Probably Don't Want to Read This Post and got Douglas Adams, which I can live with. There you go folks: If Douglas Adams had written about potty training, this is what it would read like.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
An Equation
R = kO
Where
R is the time to recover from an organizing project.
O is the time actually spent organizing.
k is a constant factoring in the amount of time it takes the children to turn everything back into chaos.
This is why I can never get ahead.
Where
R is the time to recover from an organizing project.
O is the time actually spent organizing.
k is a constant factoring in the amount of time it takes the children to turn everything back into chaos.
This is why I can never get ahead.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Many Kinds of Peril
A month or so ago His Majesty picked up an old pup tent somewhere and set it up in the garden for the kids to play in. Needless to say, it wasn't too long before the older two were begging to be allowed to sleep out overnight in it.
Now, DOB and I have very different feelings about sleeping outside, and not according to gender stereotypes, either. He cannot conceive of why anyone would want to sleep outside, while I grew up in a family where tents were for sissies and where my aunt and uncle have slept outside every night for decades. (Although they live in southern California, so it doesn't quite apply here.)
Anyway, last Friday we finally agreed to let them have a try, and trotted out the requisite amounts of blankets, pillows, stuffed animals and flashlights. Then everyone remembered they hadn't been potty. Then everyone remembered something else they had forgotten.
Then everything got quiet.
Until ten o'clock, when we heard them at the door. D1 was crying because D2 didn't want to sleep outside anymore, and she didn't want to do it alone. So we sat down and discussed why D2 didn't want to sleep outside any more.
Actually, what we discussed, as D2 brought up one thing after another, was the better-known animals of several continents, their level of danger to humans and their likelihood of coming into the tent. Polar bears were perilous, but wouldn't like the heat. Lions couldn't cross the ocean. Bunnies were near at hand, but afraid of humans. So were deer. Slugs were not afraid of humans, but wouldn't like the tent fabric.
Spiders, though . . . there was no denying that spiders might get in. Whereupon D1 began to look relieved that sleeping out was no longer on the agenda.
We put the quilt over the table instead and let them camp out in the living room. As I passed by a few minutes later, I heard a small voice from under the table, "But . . . couldn't we bonk our heads on the table?"
Now, DOB and I have very different feelings about sleeping outside, and not according to gender stereotypes, either. He cannot conceive of why anyone would want to sleep outside, while I grew up in a family where tents were for sissies and where my aunt and uncle have slept outside every night for decades. (Although they live in southern California, so it doesn't quite apply here.)
Anyway, last Friday we finally agreed to let them have a try, and trotted out the requisite amounts of blankets, pillows, stuffed animals and flashlights. Then everyone remembered they hadn't been potty. Then everyone remembered something else they had forgotten.
Then everything got quiet.
Until ten o'clock, when we heard them at the door. D1 was crying because D2 didn't want to sleep outside anymore, and she didn't want to do it alone. So we sat down and discussed why D2 didn't want to sleep outside any more.
Actually, what we discussed, as D2 brought up one thing after another, was the better-known animals of several continents, their level of danger to humans and their likelihood of coming into the tent. Polar bears were perilous, but wouldn't like the heat. Lions couldn't cross the ocean. Bunnies were near at hand, but afraid of humans. So were deer. Slugs were not afraid of humans, but wouldn't like the tent fabric.
Spiders, though . . . there was no denying that spiders might get in. Whereupon D1 began to look relieved that sleeping out was no longer on the agenda.
We put the quilt over the table instead and let them camp out in the living room. As I passed by a few minutes later, I heard a small voice from under the table, "But . . . couldn't we bonk our heads on the table?"
Friday, August 06, 2010
Flowchart
If you have a 2-year-old daughter who is obsessed with animals,
And if you have a 2-year-old son who is obsessed with trucks,
And if you have a low tolerance for obvious morals and incessant rhyming in children's books,
Then you should definitely not let anyone bring this book home from the library:
And if you have a 2-year-old son who is obsessed with trucks,
And if you have a low tolerance for obvious morals and incessant rhyming in children's books,
Then you should definitely not let anyone bring this book home from the library:
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