And as Paul Simon says, "There will never be a father love his daughter as much as I love you."

To all dads everywhere,

Happy, Happy Father's Day!

:-D

Even though I was only the "MOTG," or Mother of the Groom, I found myself totally exhausted by Sunday and didn't crawl out of bed until 12:35 PM!  Thank you all so much for your notes and emails of congratulations.  This has really been a wonderful time of celebration in our journey as parents. 

One word of caution to all of you parents with young children - be careful not to blink while watching your little ones.  The days may seem long, but the years will fly  by!  It doesn't really seem that long ago that I was watching Matthew turn loose of the sofa and taking his first steps across our den at 11 months of age. :-)

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks.

Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes

There is no fast food.

Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of ‘pretend’ bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week.

Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time.

Each man must also take each child to a doctor’s appointment, a dentist appointment and a haircut appointment.

He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care.

He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.

Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done.

The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed.

During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.

They will need to read a book and then pray with the children each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child’s birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor’s name. Also the child’s weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child’s favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if…he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment’s notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years eventually earning the right to be called MOM!

Thanks, Jeanne! :-D

While I have to confess to a very healthy skepticism to a lot of advertisment PR about a company's "green"-ness (I am a child of the '60's, after all!), in reading and viewing information on the gDiapers.com website, I was amazed and thrilled at what I found. 

This company has successfully found a way for your baby to have a disposable, flushable,  environmentally-friendly diaper that is actually comfortable, absorbent, and easy to use. 

From their website:

gDiapers consist of a washable, cotton outer pant and a plastic free flushable refill.  They are made of breathable material just like sports clothing.  So, babies stay dry and happy and are far less likely to get diaper rash.

Can't flush?  It's ok to toss flushable refills because they're plastic-free.  Or garden compost the wet ones.  They'll break down in 50-150 days.

I checked further in their website and found that gDiapers are available here locally at Sevananda Natural Foods in the Little Five Points area as well as Whole Foods Markets.  Prices surprisingly are very comparable to brand-name disposable diapers.  Now, if only I had a baby to diaper! :-D

Thanks, Stewart! :-D

From Wondertime:

"Translating Newborn"

Last night, I was a recipient of a delightful link in an email from my good friend and fellow Kindermusik educator, Lori Burkhardt.  Lori is a treasure-trove of resources, all kinds of useful information for just about anyone and everyone on our Kindermusik educators loop.  She also is an expert on eBay and finds all kinds of interesting and neat items for auction there.  This particular auction was one she shared with me.

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Item #130144061675  Lot of Pokemon Cards That My Kids Tried to Sneak By Me

Description:

I'm selling a bunch of Pokemon cards.  Why?  Because my kids sneaked them into my shopping cart while at the grocery store and I ended up buying them because I didn't notice they were there until we got home.  How could I have possibly not noticed they were in my cart, you ask?  Let me explain.

You haven't lived until you've gone grocery shopping with six kids in tow. I would rather swim, covered in bait, through the English Channel, be a contestant on Fear Factor when they're having pig brains for lunch, or do fourth grade math than to take my six kids to the grocery store. Because I absolutely detest grocery shopping, I tend to put it off as long as possible. There comes a time, however, when you're peering into your fridge and thinking, "Hmmm, what can I make with ketchup, Italian dressing, and half an onion," that you decide you cannot avoid going to the grocery store any longer. Before beginning this most treacherous mission, I gather all the kids together and give them "The Lecture".

The "Lecture" goes like this:

MOM: "We have to go to the grocery store."

KIDS: "Whine whine whine whine whine."

MOM: "Hey, I don't want to go either, but it's either that or we're eating cream of onion-ketchup soup and drinking Italian dressing for dinner tonight."

KIDS: "Whine whine whine whine whine."

MOM: "Now here are the rules: do not ask me for anything, do not poke the packages of meat in the butcher section, do not test the laws of physics and try to take out the bottom can in the pyramid shaped display, do not play baseball with oranges in the produce section, and most importantly, do not try to leave your brother at the store. Again."

OK, the kids have been briefed. Time to go.

Once at the store, we grab not one, but two shopping carts. I wear the baby in a sling and the two little children sit in the carts while I push one cart and my oldest son pushes the other one. My oldest daughter is not allowed to push a cart. Ever. Why? Because the last time I let her push the cart, she smashed into my ankles so many times, my feet had to be amputated by the end of our shopping trip. This is not a good thing. You try running after a toddler with no feet sometime.

At this point, a woman looks at our two carts and asks me, "Are they all yours??"  I answer good naturedly, "Yep!"

 "Oh my, you have your hands full."

"Yes, I do, but it's fun!" I say smiling.  I've heard all this before. In fact, I hear it every time I go anywhere with my brood.

We begin in the produce section where all these wonderfully, artistically arranged pyramids of fruit stand. There is something so irresistibly appealing about the apple on the bottom of the pile, that a child cannot help but try to touch it. Much like a bug to a zapper, the child is drawn to this piece of fruit. I turn around to the sounds of apples cascading down the display and onto the floor. Like Indiana Jones, there stands my son holding the all-consuming treasure that he just HAD to get and gazing at me with this dumbfounded look as if to say, "Did you see that??? Wow! I never thought that would happen!"

I give the offending child an exasperated sigh and say, "Didn't I tell you, before we left, that I didn't want you taking stuff from the bottom of the pile???"

"No. You said that you didn't want us to take a can from the bottom of the pile. You didn't say anything about apples."

With superhuman effort, I resist the urge to send my child to the moon and instead focus on the positive - my child actually listened to me and remembered what I said!!! I make a mental note to be a little more specific the next time I give the kids The Grocery Store Lecture.

A little old man looks at all of us and says, "Are all of those your kids?"

Thinking about the apple incident, I reply, "Nope. They just started following me. I've never seen them before in my life."

OK, now onto the bakery section where everything smells so good, I'm tempted to fill my cart with cookies and call it a day. Being on a perpetual diet, I try to hurry past the assortment of pies, cakes, breads, and pastries that have my children drooling. At this point the chorus of "Can we gets" begins.

"Can we get donuts?"

"No."

"Can we get cupcakes?"

"No."

"Can we get muffins?"

"No."

"Can we get pie?"

"No."

You'd think they'd catch on by this point, but no, they're just getting started.

In the bakery, they're giving away free samples of coffee cake and of course, my kids all take one. The toddler decides he doesn't like it and proceeds to spit it out in my hand. (That's what moms do. We put our hands in front of our children's mouths so they can spit stuff into them. We'd rather carry around a handful of chewed up coffee cake, than to have the child spit it out onto the floor. I'm not sure why this is, but ask any mom and she'll tell you the same.) Of course, there's no garbage can around, so I continue shopping one-handed while searching for someplace to dispose of the regurgitated mess in my hand.

In the meat department, a mother with one small baby asks me, "Wow! Are all six yours?"

I answer her, "Yes, but I'm thinking of selling a couple of them."

(Still searching for a garbage can at this point.)

Ok, after the meat department, my kids' attention spans are spent. They're done shopping at this point, but we aren't even halfway through the store. This is about the time they like to start having shopping cart races. And who may I thank for teaching them this fun pastime? My seventh "child", also known as my husband. While I'm picking out loaves of bread, the kids are running down the aisle behind the carts in an effort to get us kicked out of the store. I put to stop to that just as my son is about to crash head on into a giant cardboard cut-out of a Keebler elf stacked with packages of cookies.

Ah! Yes! I find a small trash can by the coffee machine in the cereal aisle and finally dump out the squishy contents of my hand. After standing in the cereal aisle for an hour and a half while the kids perused the various cereals, comparing the marshmallow and cheap, plastic toy content of each box, I broke down and let them each pick out a box. At any given time, we have twenty open boxes of cereal in my house.

As this is going on, my toddler is playing Houdini and maneuvering his little body out of the seat belt in an attempt to stand up in the cart. I'm amazed the kid made it to his second birthday without suffering a brain damaging head injury. In between trying to flip himself out of the cart, he sucks on the metal bars of the shopping cart. Mmmm, can you say "influenza"?

The shopping trip continues much like this. I break up fights between the kids now and then and stoop down to pick up items that the toddler has flung out of the cart. I desperately try to get everything on my list without adding too many other goodies to the carts.

Somehow I manage to complete my shopping in under four hours and head for the check-outs where my kids start in on a chorus of, "Can we have candy"? What evil minded person decided it would be a good idea to put a display of candy in the check-out lanes, right at a child's eye level? Obviously someone who has never been shopping with children.

As I unload the carts, I notice many extra items that my kids have sneaked in the carts unbeknownst to me. I remove a box of Twinkies, a package of cupcakes, a bag of candy, and a can of cat food (we don't even have a cat!). I somehow missed the box of Pokemon cards however and ended up purchasing them unbeknownst to me.  As I pay for my purchases, the clerk looks at me, indicates my kids, and asks, "Are they all yours?"

Frustrated, exhausted from my trip, sick to my stomach from writing out a check for $289.53, dreading unloading all the groceries and putting them away and tired of hearing that question, I look at the clerk and answer her in my most sarcastic voice, "No. They're not mine. I just go around the neighborhood gathering up kids to take to the grocery store because it's so much more fun that way."

So, up for auction is an opened (they ripped open the box on the way home from the store) package of Pokemon cards.  There are 44 cards total.  They're in perfect condition, as I took them away from the kiddos as soon as we got home from the store.  Many of them say "Energy".  I tried carrying them around with me, but they didn't work.  I definitely didn't have any more energy than usual.  One of them is shiny.  There are a few creature-like things on many of them.  One is called Pupitar.  Hee hee hee Pupitar!  (Oh no!  My kids' sense of humor is rubbing off on me!)  Anyway, I don't there's anything special about any of these cards, but I'm very much not an authority on Pokemon cards.  I just know that I'm not letting my kids keep these as a reward for their sneakiness.  

Shipping is FREE on this item.  Insurance is optional, but once I drop the package at the post office, it is no longer my responsibility.  For example, if my son decides to pour a bottle of glue into the envelope, or my daughter spills a glass of juice on the package, that's my responsibility and I will fully refund your money.  If, however, I take the envelope to the post office and a disgruntled mail carrier sets fire to it, a pack of wild dogs rip into it, or a mail sorting machine shreds it, it's out of my hands, so you may want to add insurance.  I will leave feedback for you as soon as I've received your payment.  I will be happy to combine shipping on multiple items won within three days.  This comes from a smoke-free, pet-free, child-filled home.  Please ask me any questions before placing your bid.  Happy bidding! :)

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And, yes, this was a real, legitimate eBay auction (final bid: $142.51), and she  is a real mom of six children, ages 12 - 1.  Her name is Dawn Meehan of Illinois, and this eBay listing garnered her over 10,000 emails and 100,000 hits on her blog in one day alone.  Why?  The universal motherhood experience!  We've all been there at one time or another, whether with six children or just one!  :-D

You can see the eBay listing itself here and be sure to surf on over to her blog:

Because I Said So  (changing lives one diaper at a time, since 1994)

I guarantee that you will split your sides laughing!  My husband, David, and I were both howling with laughter last night, enjoying how she turned the tables on her 12yo at Target.  Enjoy!

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Kindermusik International: A Message About Toy Safety

Recent news reports have highlighted the recall of some toys found to be unsafe.  These reports have understandably raised concerns from parents.  I want to be sure you know that Kindermusik shares this concern.

For years Kindermusik has gone to great lengths to assure the safety of our products. That is why parents have come to trust the Kindermusik brand.  Kindermusik products are engineered to be educational, entertaining and safe before they enter into production.  Production samples of each product are then rigorously tested by an independent testing lab to ensure that our toys meet the highest safety standards.

All Kindermusik products have comfortably passed international safety standards in mechanical and fire hazard tests.  Our products have also been tested for potentially hazardous materials and have easily met safety standards for those materials.

Two of our core values at Kindermusik International are to Always Do What is Best for the Child, and to Be Open, Honest, and Direct.  At all times, and especially at times like these, our core values guide our actions.  That is why we bring this information directly to Kindermusik educators so you are well equipped to answer questions from your parents.

As you have come to expect from Kindermusik, we have taken great care to test that our products are safe, and we will continue safety testing with vigilance.  Please refer any further questions regarding the safety of our toys to Kindermusik International 800-628-5687 or info@kindermusik. com.

Sincerely,

Michael G. Dougherty
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Kindermusik International

All others, listen, sympathize, and enjoy! :-D

Thanks, Deborah! :-D

Chush is a school in Brooklyn, New York that caters to learning disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career.

At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of one student delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son, Shay?  Everything God does is done with perfection, but my child cannot understand things as other children do.  My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do.  Where is God's perfection?"

The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's anguish and stilled by the piercing query.  "I believe," the father answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child."

He then told the following story about his son Shay:

One afternoon, Shay and his father walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they will let me play?"

Shay's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team.  But Shay's father understood that if his son was chosen to play, it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging. Shay's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates.  Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said,  "We are losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning.  I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."

Shay's father was ecstatic as Shay smiled broadly.  Shay was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field.  In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.  In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base. Shay was scheduled to be up.  Would the team actually let Shay bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat.  Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay should at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.  One of Shay's team-mates came up to Shay and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch.  The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shay.  As the pitch came in, Shay and his teammate swung at the ball and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman.  Shay would have been out and that would have ended the game.  Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first baseman.

Everyone started yelling, "Shay, run to first. Run to first."  Never in his life had Shay run to first.  He scampered down the baseline wide-eyed and startled.  By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball.  He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shay, who was still running.  But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head.

Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second."  Shay ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home.

As Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base and shouted, "Run to third."  As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shay run home."

Shay ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

******

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats its least fortunate amongst them. 

May your day be a Shay Day.

Many thanks to Katy and Cathy.

Fathers Are Wonderful People

Fathers are wonderful people
Too little understood,
And we do not sing their praises
As often as we should...

For, somehow, Father seems to be
The man who pays the bills,
While Mother binds up little hurts
And nurses all our ills...

And Father struggles daily
To live up to "his image"
As protector and provider
And "hero of the scrimmage"...

And perhaps that is the reason
We sometimes get the notion,
That Fathers are not subject
To the thing we call emotion,

But if you look inside Dad's heart,
Where no one else can see
You'll find he's sentimental
And as "soft" as he can be...

But he's so busy every day
In the grueling race of life,
He leaves the sentimental stuff
To his partner and his wife...

But Fathers are just wonderful
In a million different ways,
And they merit loving compliments
And accolades of praise,

For the only reason Dad aspires
To fortune and success
Is to make the family proud of him
And to bring them happiness...

And like Our Heavenly Father,
He's a guardian and a guide,
Someone that we can count on
To be always on our side.

~ Helen Steiner Rice ~

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In loving memory of Joseph B. Gladden, Sr. (1917-1990)

My Father

When I was ...

• Four years old: My daddy can do anything.

• Five years old: My daddy knows a whole lot.

• Six years old: My dad is smarter than your dad.

• Eight years old: My dad doesn't know exactly everything.

• Ten years old: In the olden days, when my dad grew up, things were sure different.

• Twelve years old: Oh, well, naturally, Dad doesn't know anything about that. He is too old to remember his childhood.

• Fourteen years old: Don't pay any attention to my dad. He is so old-fashioned.

• Twenty-one years old: Him? My Lord, he's hopelessly out of date.

• Twenty-five years old: Dad knows about it, but then he should, because he has been around so long.

• Thirty years old: Maybe we should ask Dad what he thinks. After all, he's had a lot of experience.

• Thirty-five years old: I'm not doing a single thing until I talk to Dad.

• Forty years old: I wonder how Dad would have handled it. He was so wise.

• Fifty years old: I'd give anything if Dad were here now so I could talk this over with him. Too bad I didn't appreciate how smart he was. I could have learned a lot from him.

Author Unknown

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"I've learned that simple walks with my father, around the block on summer nights when I was a child, did wonders for me as an adult." -- Andy Rooney

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