When my son has tee ball practice, I set up my little folding chair, and either chat with another parent or read a book.  Today was a reading day, and at one point I happened to look up at the team as they were lined up to run relays around the bases.

Much to my surprise, one of the boys simply walked up to another who was waiting patiently for his turn, grabbed him by the shoulders and literally threw him to the ground.  It wasn’t because the thrower was bigger or stronger than the throwee, it was just that the throwee wasn’t expecting someone to walk up and attack him for no good reason.  I can totally understand that, I wouldn’t have expected it either. 

Dad of thrower is standing near me, and says not a word to his thrower son.   And this is not the first or even the second time that thrower boy has done this to people.  The dude is a serial thrower.

Silent Dad, you get the Lazy Parenting Award^TM for your “boys will be boys” atttitude and not telling your aggressive son to knock it the heck off.

Boys, much like lion or tiger cubs, are absolutely into horsing around.  However, unless the horsing around is a mutually agreed upon activity, it shouldn’t happen.  Just the other day the Munchkin and a friend of his were in a bounce house and doing exactly the same Wrestlemania moves on each other.  However, they were landing on a soft surface, and by the dual set of giggles, you could tell it was all in good fun.   When they started to get a bit out of control, they were told to cool it.  And they did.

But, violence for the simple sake of violence is not to be excused as simply “boy” behavior.  I resent people like Silent Dad, because then I am forced to tell my son to be on his guard for cretins such as that and never let anyone throw him to the ground just because it seemed like a really good idea at the time.  These kids are five and six years old and already there is a fight for dominance in the pack.  Ridiculous.

It is people like Silent Dad who perpetuate the cycle of bullying, threats, and general dominant idiot behavior that can be so harmful to the psyches of children. 

And I have to say that even though I’m a pacifist at heart, a tiny part of me would rather like to throw Silent Dad on the ground one day and see just how he likes it. He’s kind of wimpy, and with the element of surprise on my side, I bet I could do it, too.

Bad Glinda. Bad, bad Glinda.

Everything’s funnier from a three year old’s perspective, no?

Via Gawker

Ahhhh, it’s that time again.  Time for us to salivate over rationally and logically determine which celebrity dad is hotter than the other.  Things are starting to heat up over in this little corner of the blogosphere with all this man candy.  And that’s the way mama likes it, for sure.

Last week saw our two-time champion Jason Bateman duking it out against Mr. Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman.  Poor Jason, he initially held his own, but eventually lost by a ten percent margin to his more hirsute opponent.

Hey, some women are all about the hair.  Not me personally, but each to her own.

Now, on to the fight!

 vs.

more at twiigs.com…

Yet another reminder that chores should be closely supervised:

From the esteemed FAILblog, although it would also work for StuffWhitePeopleLike:

Stuff White People Like examines the issue: Should white children be allowed to drink wine?

Being able to declare “my favorite wine as a child” in a conversation is recognized as more impressive than stories about extended visits to wine regions. In fact, it can only be topped by a story about opening your own vineyard.

 

File this under That’s Just Wrong.

Because the average child’s day just doesn’t include enough opportunities to view or conduct stylized physical violence, that bastion of taste and nurturing World Wrestling Entertainment has launched a website, magazine, toy line, and (tentative) television show to feed this perceived need. Did someone cancel the Road Runner while I wasn’t looking or something?

From Variety:

“A large percentage of children in America get introduced to our brand from 6 to 10 years old,” said Geof Rochester, exec VP of marketing for WWE. “We said, ‘We have a strong kids audience; let’s embrace that.’ We want to have a lifelong relationship with these kids…Anything we do, we do multiplatform,” Rochester said. “As we look at the kids marketplace, we’ll attack it the same way.”

Sounds to me like somebody needs a little Time Out.

For some strange reason, this week just sort of sped by, and here it is Friday already!  I hope your week went as quickly as mine did.  And if it didn’t, I just so happen to have some serious man candy for you today.

To be honest, I was quite surprised that Jason Bateman beat out Benjamin Bratt in last week’s Faceoff.  I was sure many of you ladies were going to go for the tall, dark, and handsome BB, but Mr. Bateman (who will always occupy a soft spot in my heart for being Michael Bluth) won the contest quite handily.

So, I am going to start throwing some heavy hitters at y’all and see what happens. I also wanted to let you know what hard, backbreaking work it is looking at pictures of handsome man after handsome man, trying to determine which one is worthy of this contest. I do it all for you, my friends. All for you.

Ready?

 vs.

more at twiigs.com…

As I have mentioned before, the Munchkin is playing T-ball this year.  Nothing excites him more than being able to put on his uniform, which is a blue jersey with his name on the back and his sparkling white pants.

Wait, did I just say sparkling white pants?

Listen, obviously the T-ball league is run by a bunch of men, because no woman in their right mind would ever sentence another woman to the laundry hell that is a five year old in white pants.  Who plays on grass.  Which is sometimes muddy.  Which results in pants that wind up being not so sparkling white at the end of a game.

A fellow mom was sitting next to me as we watched practice last week, and she asked me what I used to get the Munchkin’s pants clean.  She told me that she didn’t want to use bleach, but had heard that Oxi-Clean worked well.

I had to fess up that I do use a bit of bleach, else the pants would already be gray-green from the knee down.

She told me that nothing she had used got the pants clean, so she just went ahead and bought a few other pairs.

It was at that point that I wanted to leap off my folding chair and cry, “We must stop the insanity! Who gives a crap if our sons’ pants are not pure white?  Does it make us bad mothers if they are not?”

The answer is, of course not.

But if only we lived in a world where dirty pants were worn with pride.  They would be the mark of a dedicated player and a mother who is too proud to get rid of her child’s badge of honor for sacrificing their body for that ground ball.

Maybe someday.

But until then, I’m sticking with the bleach.

Source 

As our devoted readers know, we in the Manolosphere are vigorously opposed to bigotry of any kind, including the particular, peculiar branch known as sexism. Naturally, then, it is with mixed feelings that we present the following; it is both too bizarre to ignore and by its very nature completely sexist:

The purpose of this website was to test market interest through a pilot scheme.
Applications for donation packs have far exceed the expectations.
Our clients are calling a halt to the invitation to apply for packs,
and will review the results of the scheme to decide on how to proceed.

All submissions sent to the website are fully protected under Irish privacy regulations,
and will not be released to ANY third party.

Well, presumably eventually they WILL be released to a third party, or what’s the whole point?

Does this company know their market or, like, what?