54% of you have no pity for the uncaring parent of a toddler who is having a public meltdown.  Which, let’s admit, is pretty much going to happen at least once if your toddler ever leaves the house.  36% can totally walk a mile in the suffering parent’s shoes, 6% try to ignore it, and 3% say shut up already. I recently thought about how I react, and usually I’m pretty sympathetic.  Probably moreso now that I’ve got one of my own right now that is quite a few notches up on the “difficult” scale.

But, let’s talk about Halloween!  To me, it is always a big bummer when Halloween falls on a school night.  Not that it’s a big deal for us this year, but for many other people, it puts a bit of a kibosh on the festivities.  It seems at least one lawmaker agrees with me, and earlier this year introduced a bill (in his state, that is) to have Halloween celebrated on the last Saturday in October, no matter the date.

I promised, and here are my personal downsides to homeschooling.  Click here for the Top Ten Things I DO like.

10.  Oh, the weight of responsibility!  If he can’t get into an Ivy League, I’ve got no one to blame but me.  Kidding. Sorta.

9. Storing all of the various and sundry items needed to pursue school at home.  Had to purchase a small bookcase just for all the stuff.

8. I’m sure this is different for most people, but I personally dislike being a stern taskmaster.

7.  Which brings us to the fact that nine year old boys can be ah, a bit averse to learning. Let alone one who would never speak to a teacher the way he speaks to me when he doesn’t want to do something.

6. The fact that I am probably more critical of him to his face than a teacher would be.

5. Having to do school work when my toddler has pretty much tired me out for the day.

4.  Feeling like I have very little time to relax.

3. Having a gnawing feeling that I could be doing any or all of this better than I currently am.

2. Not being able to drop my kid off and have him be someone else’s problem for 6 1/2 hours a day.

1.  Trying to balance everything, and somehow coming up short.

Now, I know I told you I would have the downsides to homeschooling for you today, but then I realized it was Wednesday.

Nobody wants to hear complaints on a Wednesday.

So, I bring to you the tumblr My Parents Were Awesome, and some of the awesomeness contained therein.

10. The amount of depth we can go into on a particular subject at any given time. For example, we do current events, and I will tell him about something important that has happened somewhere in the world, and he will grab his globe and go find it. I think he has a better grasp of world geography than me at this point.

9. The fact that I know where my son is all the time (which may not be such a bonus for him, eh?)

8. No bullies! Not that it was an issue with my son, but I have heard some stories that would make your toes curl, and I am just glad that my son will not have to deal with that type of crap. I am not of the opinion that dealing with bullying is a “normal” part of growing up.

7. Not having to pack lunch and snack every single damn day. AND knowing what he eats every day as opposed to what is traded away/thrown away.

6. Being able to really control what my son is learning, and how. Not that I am doing some sort of free-form schooling, but empahsizing the things I think are important versus what someone else might think. Also, being able to introduce a critical thinking element to pretty much every subject.

5. The definite downturn in illnesses. Some people might see that as potentially bad, but I’m not one of them.

4. No more endless fundraising appeals. While I totally understand the need, they are still exhausting and annoying.

3. Field trips! Field trips! Field trips!

2. No drop off or pick up lines! Yay!

1. Waking up whenever we want. And then doing whatever we want during the day instead of planning our days around when school gets out.

I never really knew how much of a nonconformist I truly am until we started this.

Tomorrow, the flip side!

50% of you are in agreement with California’s recently enacted law that requires schools to teach about the accomplishments of members of the LGBT community. 20% are good with the idea, but not sure how it will be carried out in the classroom. 25% think that it should be up to the parents to introduce the topic to their children. I think the problem lies in how this will be implemented. I am all for it, but are they going to say something like “Harvey Milk, gay legislator…” or just Harvey Milk, yadda yadda yadda. Does including the fact that they are part of the LGBT community make them seem more “other” than if only their achievements were discussed? I don’t know.

As for today, I’m wondering how you react to someone else’s screaming toddler.

Arjun Rampal gave it a shot, but failed to defeat our lovely-eyed champion, Hrithik Roshan. Mr. Roshan is now only one win away from the CDF Hall of Fame.

Today’s challenger is a mega-successful pop/R&B singer.  And let me tell you, after looking though his photos, he is also one supremely snazzy dresser.

VERSUS>

The American Academy of Pediatrics has advised that they no longer recommend the use of crib bumpers.

Yes, the ones people have been using for YEARS. Pretty much every single crib bedding set at BabiesRUs has a bumper.

Now, I’m not saying that there is no basis for the new recommendation, I’m sure there is.  It’s just that all of a sudden, bam!  Don’t use them anymore! They can kill! I’d heard various things throughout the years about crib bumpers, and when my daughter (briefly, like, two weeks) slept in a crib we had the breathable ones.

But the whole notion of the crib bumpers is to keep their arms and legs from getting stuck in between the slats, as well as in my daughter’s case, to keep her head/body from bumping against the slats and waking her up.  Which she did constantly, which is why we started co-sleeping.  She also would try to climb up on top of the bumpers, as they had to be stretched fairly tightly to stay on properly, thus resulting in something she could get her feet up on.  Scary stuff, much scarier than the supposed risks of us rolling on top of her or something, which has never even remotely happened.  When I sleep with her I am so hyper-aware of her presence that I barely even move.

Neither of my children did well in the crib, and luckily we had bought the convertible kind, because at least we got to use it as a head and foot board for my son’s big boy bed.  Otherwise, total waste of four hundred bucks.

So if you aren’t supposed to use crib bumpers, I wonder what people are going to do?  Will people pay for them but not use them?  Or will all of these sets suddenly go on sale?

Courtesy of Levi’s.

Yeah, because a sweatshirt with a fake denim jacket screened on the front of it is SO COOL!  Because everyone knows that denim in the front and sweatshirt material on the back is the new mullet!

Listen, they make ACTUAL denim everything for toddlers, so I suggest simply going that route if you are really into that type of thing.

And Jesus Christ on a stick, they want almost thirty bucks for this crap?

Just say no, ladies, just say no to the newest version of the mullet.

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