(1) The Alka Seltzer jingle. What fun, the kids running around plopping and fizzing with wild abandon over and over at dinner AND later in the bathtub AND streaking across the house shrieking WHAT A RELIEF IT IS! until finally I’m like “it’s not even a song. It doesn’t work that well. Stop it with the plop plop because it’s starting to sound nasty up in here.”
(2) After an episode of Wild Kratts on PBS, my son was talking about lizards and what rhymes with lizards is skizzards (hee hee) and I was like “I can top that, kid, because there’s a band actually called Lynyrd Skynyrd” and his face like was like “yeah right, and I wasn’t born three years ago” but I showed him how sweet Alabama was on my ipod and he thought everything about that was JUST BRILLIANT.
(3) When mommy’s boss calls in the evening, you get pushed into the living room, mom ignores you for about fifteen minutes, and you get to watch a surprise television show. Hooray for bosses! See also: can I have a piece of candy while you’re on the phone and I know you’re sound asleep but can I just crawl in bed with you because I’m cold.
(4) Broccoli Stems are Disgusting. The rule involving eating your broccoli to get dessert does not include the hard stringy stalks on which the delicious parts of vegetables happen to grow. I’m a pushover on this.
(5) If there’s an chance for everyone to sit at the piano wearing plastic crowns singing Christmas songs while children make shaky hand-held music videos on the iphone, regardless of the fact that it’s five minutes past bedtime, such opportunities should always be taken.
(6) When mom comes barreling into your school wearing a pencil skirt to read during second-grade library hour and she busts out into song in the middle of a book (because it says in the book that the person was singing – what else was she supposed to do?) this is not normal and parents really just usually read. Huh.
(7) So joy to the world – my daughter now longs for even more American Girl trinkets like a volkswagon, swiss chalet, hot air balloon, competitive gymnastics set, sailboat, and other first-world playthings that cost more than a mortgage payment because the ELEVEN MILLIONTH CATALOG has finally arrived. Thank you Mattel. I hate you.
(8) But it was Laura Engles Wilder’s Christmas in the Big Woods and Pa was playing the fiddle and there were lyrics literally written into the text. It wasn’t like I could just talk that part.
(9) If you leave your scooter behind mom’s large vehicle and it gets run over in the morning before school she will show zero sympathy and will tell you to put away your things with disgust and will drink coffee and tweet at red lights like she just don’t care about your little ruined scooter problem.
(10) For Christmas, don’t waste your time asking for a new scooter from Santa because without shoes and if you are okay with veering slightly to the left and don’t mind a bit of a wobble, this thing TOTALLY WORKS
(11) Mom gets super mad if you say things like “Santa’s not real/ prove it then” when a certain three-year-old brother is in the car and for some reason nonverbal clues like winking, wincing, eyebrow raising, and fake coughing simply don’t work to curtail anything and things similar to “DON’T RUIN THE MAGIC FOR EVERYONE” are screamed out loud. Geez.
(12) Before bed, let’s all talk about the length of a small intestine, that an esophagus carries food from the throat to the stomach, red blood cells, and umbilical cords. Thanks a lot, Magic School Bus’ traveling circus through the human body, for causing all kinds of late-night discussions on topics too advanced for children. What happened to Good Night Moon? Why are we talking about bile?
(13) Mom’s a total nerd. This won’t fully set in for another few years, but a seed was firmly planted with all the singing, wincing, discussion of umbilical cords, and acceptance of crowns. Just wait until high school, kids, when your dates come over and I introduce Viking Night whereby we tear into turkey legs without silverware. You’ll love me to the moon and back. See? I’m glad we did all that reading.
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