This week at Parenting.com I’m taking my kids on a virtual tour of our house, introducing them to all the excellent features it has to offer.

Dresser – Kids. Meet your dresser. Your clothes live inside. I know you’re aware that the drawers open but did you know that they can also close?

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Laylee just said, “Mom, you’re amazing! You can copy any voice and sound exactly like the person you’re imitating.”

“Yes,” I said, “If that person is a member of the Lollipop Guild.” I am known for my munchkin impressions.

“Also French people,” she added.

Ah yes. French people. Ziss I cannot deny. Ahn-han-han.

I’ve been enjoying The Prudent Homemaker, a website dedicated to feeding your family well on a tight budget, among other things. Today I tried out her French bread recipe which worked beautifully the first time around. I was so proud of myself that I started speaking like the chef from The Little Mermaid… badly. Apparently, it was extremely impressive. I now have a reputation as a master of vocal disguise.

I am also a master of short cuts so if you decide to make this simple bread, I found that you can make it even simpler by kneading the dough in your Kitchen Aid rather than by hand. It still rose quite nicely after 8-10 minutes in the machine. It wasn’t as blissfully domestic, but I was able to check email while the bread was kneading so I’m totally okay with that. Maybe next time I’ll wear a frilly apron while checking email and that will even the domestical score.

It’s time to introduce a new game on the blog. I like to call it, “Guess What I Ordered – No Really – Guess.” The way it works is I order something in the mail and slowly reveal what I found inside the package and you get to guess what I ordered. You can only look at one picture at a time and no skipping to the end. If you can guess what I ordered before looking at the final picture, you win… your mind-reader’s license. This is a good one. Ready? Okay.

Picture number one:

If you guessed that I ordered something from Misikko, you’re RIGHT! But that’s not specific enough. Try again.

Picture number two:

If you guessed bubble wrap or a box full of pink and monkeys, you are incorrect.

Picture number three:

Mid-grade false flower in eggshell? Nope.

Picture number four:

Did you guess pink soap flowers in a recyclable recepticle with a pink bow? Incorrect!

Picture number five:

Gorilla with convenient velcro hands? So very wrong. Both you and the gorilla.

Picture number six:

Pink satin bag or pink satin bag full of emery boards with their own individual ball chains? Uh-uh.

Picture number seven:

Bargain brand hand sanitizer? Not a bit.

Picture number eight:

Purple satin clutch? This was a free gift.

Picture number nine:

White satin bag nesting inside the purple satin bag? We’re getting close.

Picture number ten:

TA-DA! If you guessed Hana Shine Shield Advanced Heat Styling Therapy, you’re a winner!

I’m excited to try it out. It comes as a recommendation from Abby, my hair guru, who has a blog that I lurk on and then spend hours trying to copy her hair… because I am creepy like that. If things don’t work out with me and Hana, there’s always the velcro monkey. What a haul!

I saw a woman in the line at the grocery store today who was a dead ringer for Dame Judy Dench. It made sense to me because Dame Judy seems to pop up in all kinds of places. But then I thought, “Why would an older woman with a British accent be required to play ‘woman buying avocadoes at Safeway’?” No, they could have gotten anybody for that role. Heck, I’ve played it before.

Judy Dench should be kept available for playing roles like: persnickety housekeeper, or snobby aristocrat, or hard-bitten head of British intelligence, or The Queen.

Today at Parenting I share a little of why Magoo has me laughing every single day.

[click to Read at Parenting.com]

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Magoo loves his new book, Night Creatures, a Scholastic book order pick that teaches about all things nocturnal. With its help, he’s busily categorizing everyone and everything as either nocturnal or diurnal. Charles Ingalls from LHOTP is like a night creature because he sometimes works all day and then sleeps in late on Sundays so he’s unable to make it to church.

He told me that I’m nocturnal as well. “You’re nocturnal b’guzzz you get up in the night and FEEED the baby.” Somehow “feed” came across as something very creepy and vampire-like.

He’s blown away by the radness that is breastfeeding. He wants to watch. He wants to help.

So Mr. Personality was watching me pump milk for Wanda the other day, Wanda the blessed saint of taking a bottle perfectly on demand but taking the breast on demand as well, when he noticed that one breast was not producing as well as the other.

“Umm… Mom. That one doesn’t do very much milk from it.”

Then with a look that showed he suddenly realized that what he’d said might be offensive to my left breast, he backpedaled by adding, “But you’re, well, you’re kind of like the best mom ever.”

He is completely enamored with the breast pump.

“Do you know why it’s so cool mom? It’s so cool because it’s like a machine… IN A BAG!”

Yes. It’s exactly like that.

The day before Thanksgiving, Magoo was going on and on about what he’d get in his basket the next day. “I hope I get the same stuff as last year, chocolate, a rubber snake, lots of candy.”

“I think you’re talking about Easter. Thanksgiving doesn’t have any presents. We just eat turkey and are thankful for stuff.”

“Oh. Well, can I have the turkey leg then?”

“We don’t usually eat a whole turkey leg. We just slice it up and eat the slices.”

“Then what do we do with its big brown head?”

“We (“we” meaning the farmers and turkey hunters who sell their products to the grocery store) cut off its head, pluck its feathers and cook just the body.”

“Eeewwww! That sounds really gross… But I like it.”

It’s been just months now that I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post this video, what I like to think of as the best music video ever made. You have to watch to the end. It’s worth it.

I have to say though that I’m not sure that Danny appreciated the dramatical nature of the material. His timing on the pregnant pause just before singing “–HELLO!” just did not move me the way Mr. Richie’s always has. That could be why he only came in 3rd place.

*For my mom and other non-American-Idol viewers. Danny Gokey, the third runner up this year, sang this song on the season finale tonight, thus giving me the needed excuse to share this nugget of YouTube goodness with the world.*

I recently had a lot of fun going through this guy’s stuff. Thanks to Stephanie for pointing him out to me.

Track camp is really the only reason I can hold my head high at the end of a wasted spring break.


[Read the post at Parenting.com]