Cynical Mom

Planning ahead for teaching your kids funny things to say

Corporate Mommy's example cracks me up, I am filing that one away for the future when my boy can enunciate better.

This week we taught Jared how to do the "Helllooooooooo" from the Seinfeld episode about Jerry's girlfriend's belly button. Or really, what I mean by 'taught' in this case is that David and I were doing the voice, and Jared piped up and did his own variation on it, which made us promptly dissolve into giggles and keep doing it over and over again. Naturally, Jared likes making us laugh and so he's continued doing it too. So far, we're not sick of it... so far.

We're still working on "Hello Moto", but I am confident he will pick it up soon.

Of course, a coworker warned us to not get too carried away and think about the long-term impact... they taught their daughter "talk to the hand" and are really regretting it now.

It's 1751 miles to Chicago

...we've got five children under the age of five, one camera, half of a gig's worth of space on a compact flash card, it's still light out and we're wearing matching shirts.

Hit it.

Very Mom's post about photoshopping her two kids together and Suburban Bliss's discussion of photo problems with kids reminded me of my favorite picture of my son and his four cousins (ages 5, 3, 18m, 18m, 1).

With digital, getting good shots of just one kid isn't too hard, you just keep shooting and throw away the bad ones. With two, it's tricky but can be done. With five (under the age of 5, no less)... there's just no point once they're all mobile.

Here's our first casual attempt when we only had four, July 2003:

Not exactly a rousing success. So six months later, when there were five and we were all together again, we resolved to try for real this time, in our home studio:

Not too bad... the littlest one was too young to smile and the middle two weren't mobile yet, although my son was too busy trying to swallow his fist to smile and the eldest two were old enough to hear and then ignore directions.

Fast forward another six months, all five are plenty mobile, and try again ("they just don't get it, do they?"):

This time it's the littlest one (by age, that is, not girth due to my little runt) trying to stuff something into her craw, my boy's pissed that mom hasn't figured out that pictures of five kids together just don't work, #2 is angelic and #1 is trying to stop #4 from escaping while probably wishing he could do the same.

Eh. So finally, when we had them all together again this past September, I resolved to try it again but this time with a lot lower stress. So we did a little photo math:

+

+

+

=
<drumroll>...

When people see this print on my door, everyone wants to know how I got five kids to pose like that for one shot. When I tell them the story, their next reaction is "Oh, you can tell it's a composite because #4 is abnormally large" and I tell them no, he actually is that big.

Precocious

This is the way of parenting blogs, we spend our days blathering on about how adorable, brilliant, charming, engaging and cute our children are. Well, Jared just surprised us again with his piercing insight into the world of colors. Yes, that sweet little 18 month old boy already knows his colors! Why he can already identify the colors of:

#1: The sky (although not the one in seattle these days)
#2: The sea
#3: Bluebirds
#4: The taskbar in windows xp's default theme
#5: Jeans
#6: Blue markers
#7: The color blue

Of course, it's hard to understand him, so when you ask him what color your chartreuse shirt or salmon-colored kerchief is, it might sound like blue - but rest assured, he's saying the correct color, you're just not hearing it correctly.

Oh, goody.

This blog is the #1 google hit for:

humiliated by mom for playing with myself

The worst part is, someone clicked through to here after performing that search, poor thing.

Well, just to be safe, let me say: Don't let anyone humiliate you for such a thing... Just try not to do it in public.

I also wish it was like moving a couch

I loved this quote from DefectiveYeti in this article about becoming a father:

in my mind, bringing a kid in the world would be like moving a couch: each of us would lift an end, and success would depend on our joint effort and cooperation. But now I realize that an unborn child is less like a couch and more like a box of books: very heavy but too small to be ported by more than one person. Essentially you wind up with one person doing all the work while the other ‘supervises’ or just flutters around saying, ‘Jeez, I wish I could help!’ and occasionally opening a door.

Lesson learned: Know your target audience

As a joke when our son was young, I bought my husband a variety of earplugs so that he could get some sleep overnight (the joke was "Ha ha you have to get up with me!"). I ran across them recently and had to chuckle at the difference in, well, target audience for these two varieties even though they have almost the same sound blocking capabilities:

Hint: Look at the manufacturer's recommended purpose.

Culture shock

I have stumbled across a glorious new blog, from an American woman living in Japan and working as a kindergarten teacher, thanks to the Zero Boss.

I've been to Japan myself a few times and have always found the experience somewhat magical and always humorous in one way or another. Actually, my picture on this blog was taken of me in Japan a few years ago at a conference for work. And whenever I need to kick back and relax, I like to do so with a nice cool glass of Calpis or Pocaro Sweat. It must be something about that powerful water. For a few years growing up, I was an expat myself, and her descriptions ring so true and bring back many memories. My husband and I both find Japan country intriguing; her tales of living in Japan are fascinating, so I am now subscribed.

The post that really made me laugh out loud was this one, about mistaking a porn video store for a normal one:

So last night, for reasons of mistaken shop identity, I found myself in the middle of a porn shop. I first noticed there were no other women in the shop, and then noticed there were no men on the video boxes, and that the women weren't wearing clothes. I met the eyes of several humiliated businessmen before comprehending my mistake, and headed back for the door. But on my way out, I couldn't help noticing a rack of costumes by the door. The usual stuff: a bunny, a schoolgirl, a nurse, and... a Wendy's Hamburgers cashier's uniform, neatly wrapped and expensively tagged.

Wendy's???