All right, here I thought I was being all tricky. Since I mostly hone my tricks on a four year old, apparently I’m going to have to up my game.
The hippo blanket was indeed the more expensive item. Which surprised me, because the circus blanket was appliqued, had embroidery, and has a satin backing.
Poor, poor elephants, hardly anybody liked you!
Developing an appreciation for Nine Inch Nails before you’ve even outgrown the car seat? This kid is shockingly precocious, and no doubt destined to intimidate entire classrooms with his effortless cool!
As the YouTube commenter said, I just hope nobody catches him singing the words to Closer on the playground!
Have you ever watched The Price is Right and found yourself cackling gleefully when the overly perky contestant guessed the wrong prices and that poor dude in lederhosen fell off the Alps?
Well then, just picture me with perfectly coiffed grey hair, holding a slim microphone with my pinky sticking out, and a life’s mission to get you to spay and neuter your pets! Or, if you prefer, big black glasses and a crew cut. Either way works for me.
Now, I’m going to show you pictures of two similar items, and you are going to use your vast expertise in merchandise pricing to figure out which one retails for less. Finally, an outlet for that precious knowledge, gleaned over countless hours of pawing through racks and scouring internet catalogs.
Or, hey, just take a guess!
One of these baby blankets retails for $42.00, the other sells for $19.95. Despite what you see in the pictures here, they are approximately the same size, weight, and made out of the same material. And this is where I shake my microphone gently in your direction and admonish you to remember that these are regular retail prices.
Is the cheapie this one:
or this one:
I want your guesses down below in the comments. Check back on Friday to see if you were correct!
Speaking of food, I think one of the most important skills you can teach your child is how to cook for themselves.
When your kid is finally able to move out of the house, is it your wish that they subsist solely on EasyMac and frozen burritos? And when they really feel like living it up, some bagel bites?
If not, then you have to bring them into the kitchen. Make no mistake, it is messy. Flour will be spilled all over the counters and the floor. Eggshell pieces will undoubtedly fall into the bowl due to overenthusiastic cracking, necessitating patience and a spoon to fish them out. Not that anything like that has happened in my kitchen. Nope, nosirree. However, a little bird told me that the key thing to do when something along those lines occurs is to purposely add something crunchy to the recipe. But I personally have no firsthand knowledge of this.
Bringing children into the kitchen means they need to be protected from themselves, and the most efficient way to do this is with an apron.
Aren’t these adorable? You can’t tell from the picture, but they also have pockets on the front.
And even if your kitchen doesn’t quite escape from the destruction, at least your kids will have an apron-shaped area of cleanliness on their bodies.
Our own version of BoingBoing’s patented Unicorn Chaser.
We’ve had some complaints about the post below this (and it is indeed strong stuff if you came here looking for tips on back to school shopping), so we are offering, in lieu of smelling salts, recourse to our #1 favorite mindwash of all time: the ever-popular, mindless, yet irresistible force of nature that is We Like tha Moon, by the Spongmonkeys (and no, that’s not a spelling mistake). This is so strange, yet so cute in a Terry Gilliam Was My Babysitter kind of way, that it gets both the “That’s Just Wrong” tag and the “The Cuteness Abounds” tag.
Toddlers like this song even better than stoners do. Not that I know any stoners. Oh, perish the thought!
And lookie: here’s the lyrics.
We like the moon
coz it is close to us.
We like the MOOOOOON!
But not as much as a spoon
coz that’s more use for eating soup
and a fork isn’t very useful for that
unless it has got many vegetables
and then you might be better off with a chopstick.
Unlike the moon
It is up in the sky
It’s up there very high
but not as high as maybe dirigibles or zeppelins
or lightbulbs
and maybe clouds
and puffins also I think maybe they go quite high too
maybe not as high as the moon.
Coz the moon is very high.
We like tha moon
Tha moon is very useful everyone.
Everybody like the moon.
Because it light up the sky as night and it lovely and it make the tide go
and we like it
but not as much as cheese.
We really like cheese
we like zeppelins
We really like them
and we like kelp
and we like moose
and we like deer
and we like marmots
and we like all the fluffy animals.
We really like tha moon.
How to get your kidlets to do all the weeding you promised your spouse you’d get done while s/he was at work. As tricksy methodologies go, this one has legs; I’m pretty sure this was the only way my ancestors ever got their fields harvested. Well do I remember my mother’s taunts of “your sister’s picked a whole basket more strawberries than you; do you think you can catch her?”
And lookie: here’s a whole list of functional, kid-sized gardening tools, so now there’s no excuse for having a ratty yard. Just equip your teeny team and challenge them to make Ye Olde English Lawne Strypes.
