A Toddler's Rules of Ownership:

If I like it, it's mine.
If it's in my hand, it's mine.
If I can take it from you, it's mine.
If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks sort of like mine, it's mine.
If I think it's mine, it's mine.
If it's yours and I steal it, it's mine.

PARENTS' DICTIONARY

AMNESIA: condition that enables a woman who has gone through labor to have sex again.
DUMBWAITER: one who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.
FAMILY PLANNING: the art of spacing your children the proper distance apart to keep you on the edge of financial disaster.
FEEDBACK: the inevitable result when the baby doesn't appreciate the strained carrots.
FULL NAME: what you call your child when you're mad at him.
GRANDPARENTS: the people who think your children are wonderful even though they're sure you're not raising them right.
HEARSAY: what toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.
IMPREGNABLE: a woman whose memory of labor is still vivid.
INDEPENDENT: how we want our children to be as long as they do everything we say.
OW: the first word spoken by children with older siblings.
PRENATAL: when your life was still somewhat your own.
PUDDLE: a small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.
SHOW OFF: a child who is more talented than yours.
STERILIZE: what you do to your first baby's pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby's pacifier by blowing on it.
TOP BUNK: where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.
TWO-MINUTE WARNING: when the baby's face turns red and he/she begins to make those familiar grunting noises.
VERBAL: Able to whine in words
WHODUNIT: none of the kids that live in your house... and along similar lines:
Human conception typically involves a chaotic dash by tens of millions of sperm seeking a path to a single egg. Some researchers believe that so many sperm are required because not one of them will stop to ask for directions :)

SUBJECT: The Miracle Toddler Diet

Over the years you may have noticed, as I have, that most two-year-olds are trim. It came to me one day over a cup of black coffee and a carrot that perhaps their diet is the reason. After consultation with pediatricians, X-ray technicians, and distraught moms, I was able to formulate this new diet. It is inexpensive, offering great variety and sufficient quantity. Before embarking on the diet, however, be sure to check with your doctor ... otherwise you might have to see him afterward. Good luck!

DAY ONE
Breakfast: One scrambled egg, one piece of toast with grape jelly. Eat 2 bites of egg, using your fingers; dump the rest on the floor. Take 1 bite of toast, then smear the jelly over your face and clothes.
Lunch: Four crayons (any color), a handful of potato chips, and a glass of milk (3 sips only, then spill the rest).
Dinner: A dry stick, two pennies and a nickel, 4 sips of stale beer.
Bedtime Snack: Toast piece of bread and toss it on the kitchen floor.

DAY TWO
Breakfast: Pick up stale toast from kitchen floor and eat it. Drink half bottle of vanilla extract or one vial of vegetable dye.
Lunch: Half a tube of "Pulsating Pink" lipstick and a cigarette (to be eaten, not smoked). One ice cube, if desired.
Afternoon Snack: Lick an all-day sucker until sticky, take outside, drop in dirt. Retrieve and continue slurping until it is clean again. Then bring inside and drop on rug.
Dinner: A rock or an uncooked bean, which should be thrust up your left nostril. Pour iced tea over mashed potatoes; eat with a spoon.

DAY THREE
Breakfast: Two pancakes with plenty of syrup, eat with fingers, rub in hair. Glass of milk: drink half, stuff pancakes in glass. After breakfast, pick up yesterday's sucker from rug, lick off fuzz, and put it on the cushion of your best chair.
Lunch: Three matches, peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Spit several bites onto the floor. Pour glass of milk on table and slurp up.
Dinner: Dish of ice cream, handful of potato chips, some wine, coffee.

FINAL DAY
Breakfast: A quarter-tube of toothpaste (any flavor), bit of soap, an olive. Pour a glass of milk over bowl of corn flakes, add a half-cup of sugar. Once cereal is soggy, drink milk and feed cereal to dog.
Lunch: Eat crumbs off kitchen floor and dining room carpet. Find that sucker and finish eating it.
Dinner: A glass of spaghetti and chocolate milk. Leave meatball on plate. Stick of mascara for dessert.

(This one is for parents of toddlers)
SUBJ: How to Bake a Cake

Preheat oven, get out utensils and ingredients.
Remove blocks and toy autos from table.
Grease pan, crack nuts.
Measure two cups flour;
Remove baby's hands from flour, wash flour off baby.
Remeasure flour.
Put flour, baking powder, salt in sifter.
Get dustpan and brush up pieces of bowl baby knocked on floor.
Get another bowl.
Answer doorbell.
Return to kitchen.
Remove baby's hands from bowl.
Wash baby.
Answer phone.
Return.
Remove 1/4 inch salt from greased pan.
Look for baby.
Grease another pan.
Answer telephone.
Return to kitchen and find baby.
Remove baby's hands from bowl.
Take up greased pan, find layer of nutshells in it.
Head for baby, who flees, knocking bowl off table.
Wash kitchen floor, table, wall, dishes.
Call baker.
Lie down.

Women: To prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag chair down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, remove 10% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for paternity, go the local drugstore, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper and read it for the last time.

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it - it'll be the last time in your life that you will have all of the answers.

To discover how the nights feel, walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. At 10pm, put down the bag, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1am. Put the alarm on for 3am. As you can't back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45 am. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4am. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flower beds, then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: first buy an octopus and a draw-string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the draw-string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

Take an egg carton, and using a pair of scissors and a can of paint, turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet tube, and using only scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into a Christmas tree. Last, take a milk container, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Coco Puffs and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations, you have just qualified for a place on the play group committee.

Forget the Miata and buy a Mini Van. And don't think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining; family cars don't look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment and leave it there. Get a quarter and stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size packet of chocolate cookies and mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There! Perfect!

Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you've had as much as you can stand, until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back in the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk. (Husbands, you probably have already experienced this :)

Always repeat everything you say at least five times, five times, five times, five times, five times.

Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats destroy or eat. Until you can easily accomplish this do not even contemplate having children.

Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Fruit Loops and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half of the Fruit Loops are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.

Learn the names of every character from Barney and Friends, Sesame Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When you find yourself singing "I love you, you love me" at work, Now! You finally qualify as a parent!

KIDS QUOTES:
A collection of quotes taken from personal emails and/or list sources.

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.

There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.

There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up here these days.

Lime is a green-tasting rock.

Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.

Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should.

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.

Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother.

Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.

We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.

To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.

In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H's as O's.

Clouds are high flying fogs.

I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.

Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.

Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dogs tongue will kill the strongest man.

A blizzard is when it snows sideways.

A monsoon is a French gentleman.

Thunder is a rich source of loudness.

Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.

Wind is like the air, only pushier.

Question: What is one horsepower?
Answer: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.

You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind.

Talc is found on rocks and on babies.

The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.

When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.

When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting.

Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand.

Someday we may discover how to make magnets that can point in any direction.

South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.

Back to My Spot