11 Step Program

A friend whose little girl was in Amelia's daycare class posted this. Hope you enjoy!!!

· 11 Step Program for those thinking of Having Kids

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
...
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.

Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

10 Months

Big Man is growing way to fast and I snagged this gem this morning while he was chowing down on his bananas and preaching to me!!! Bless him and his sweet little personality!!

Disclaimer

I really should have posted this a LONG time ago but if you haven't already figured it out I am a terrible speller and I NEVER PROOF READ so sometimes you have to use special decoding skills to understand them....especially with predictive text!

Sorry for this bad grammar, but hey it makes it interested.

Lunch Box Hide and Seek

With spring and I used that term lightly with the weather here lately arriving we have been gearin up for all kinds of fun activities. There have been Easter Egg Hunts, birthday party's, school parties and mini meltdown. So sticking with my goal of posting I give you our update.

Amelia decides at the Easter egg hint the yard decorating we more enticing than the actually eggs to hunt and started gathering them...bless her!

We had a mini meltdown in the car...okay it was a step down from nuclear explosion and one blanket shared between them solved the whole issue and made the ride home peaceful. It's the small things.

Bennett got some playtime in with his cousin Kinley. She really wasn't putting the sleeper hold on him. I promise.

Amelia picked out iced cookies for my birthday. Coincidentally while I was upstairs playing with Bennett a small "rat" got into the cookies so we didn't have as many to share with everyone. Amelia was super talkative the rest of the day. Can't imagine why?

And last but not least we had lunch box issues. After packing and giving someone her lunch, she placed it back in the cabinet and closed the door. When we got to school no lunch. When I got home I couldn't find it anywhere. I finally put my "if I were a three year old where would I put it" thinking cap on and this was the first place I looked!!!

So that has been our week. And it's just Wednesday. Whew!

The "Mommy Gene gods" are testing me!

So I have always prided myself in my ability to handle "nastiness". I think it came with being a special education teacher and always getting the good stuff. However, Regardless the "nastiness" of the situation I could NOT handle puke. End if story.... Enter the last month or so at our house. Valentines Day chocolate regurgitation spattered on the wall, the random Sunday after an Oreo or two, then the stomach bug with the classic "mama....I don't feelllll and you finish that sentence. Well I am currently camping out on my bathroom floor holding a poor sick man who has managed to cover me with puke more times than I can count and blow out a diaper which is festering somewhere.

I get it "mommy gene gods" and I am over it. I have proved my puke-worthiness so can we be done... Please?

Not Promising Quality...

So I really have been terrible on posting lately. Bennett's monthly reports are all I can manage so in order to spur myself along I am going to post quantity, not quality. They will be short and usually just picture overload, but really that's what most people care about. So here goes.

Bennett is getting mobile and with that comes learning to balance Poor guy just got over a terrible bruise and knot on the other side and now this one. A positive., he didn't drop his toy. Guess he will be able to fall and not drop his beer later in life. Yeah that was wrong!!!!

Amelia has been taking dance and just started soccer. Both are on Monday. What was I thinking. Anyway we reviewed out recital costumes and she was just a little sassy when she tried it on. Bless it!!

Nine Months....seriously!

So I really do understand where the time has gone....but it needs to slow down. I want to enjoy these sweet precious moments. Big Man continues to grow...understatement, and development such a goofy personality. Jeremy and I laughed that it looks like we are going to have two outgoing munchkins.

At his nine month checkup Bennett weighed in at 22.13....trust me, I lug him around, which is 80% and was 29 1/2 inches long. He only gained 3 lbs since his six month checkup, but grew two inches!!! His head, well the joker was in the 98th percentile. He will grow into it :).

He still eats baby food three times a day, but we have started working on transitioning him to real food with some soft veggies and fruits. He is also a giant fan of ice cream...don't judge, man likes his ice cream! He loves juice and thinks he is the sippy cup king.



He has started to pull up in his crib so we have had to lower it. He rolls across the room to get what he wants or has started this side roll,pull, side roll, pull motion in some strange version of an army crawl...whatever gets him there.

Chunky wears 12 month clothing basically for length and size 4 diapers.

Benster is talking up a storm. He can say dada, mama, nana, and baba for bottle. He also does the crazy growling low voice that sounds like Darth Vader. It cracks me up. He loves his sister to talk and play with him and gets the hiccups from laughing at her so hard.


It is truly an adventure with this kiddo and he is such a joy. So really times does need to slow a little.