Can I get a British-to-North-American translator up in here? As near as I can make out, this anatomically correct doll’s name is Baby SomethingOrOther Pee Pee, and I’m not really sure I want to know what SomethingOrOther is. Maybe you could hold up, like, one finger if it’s a cutsie word, two if it’s a little bit off, three if it’s something that would make a nine-year-old giggle, four if it has featured in a Jason Biggs movie, five if it’s featured in a Pasolini movie, etc. Also: is it sexist if there’s no girl version of this doll, or is it sexist to be relieved there’s no girl version?

via CandyKirby

It would turn out something like adorable Little Gordon Ramsay here. And people ask me why I don’t have kids!
Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Very few people know this, but there are more circles of Hell than Dante revealed. It’s true: in his original manuscript for the Divine Comedy, he revealed the existence of the mysterious “Eleventyth Circle” of Hell. A zealous editor excised the chapter in question, on the grounds that it was too terrible a secret to reveal.

We are now going to expose this great secret, right here on a parenting blog where his editor would never think to look for it. We are going to tell you just who it is who dwells and suffers eternally in the Eleventyth Circle of Hell:

Car games fascists.

My friends, I have had some agonizing road trips in my time (I particularly recall the longest four hours of my life, spent riding shotgun west of William’s Lake with a man who used every second of that time to harp upon the perfection of the political party of his choice, a group of knuckle-walking, syphillitic graft-mongers so vile that when they toured the prison system even the germs cut them dead) but nothing, my friends, compares to the excruciating, yet regrettably rarely fatal, experience of being locked in a car with someone who insists that everyone plaster a Team! Spirit! Smile! on their faces and Have! Awesome! Fun! Playing! Cool! Car! Games! Right! Now! Or! Else!

Should you feel like quietly looking out the window counting ponies, or reading your Shakespeare which isn’t going to get any shorter if you let it wait, working on your theory reconciling Aristotle and Kant, or staring at the map purposefully, sighing extravagantly, and making darting glances at the passing roadsigns in order to freak out the driver, you will be yelled at, poked, and very likely even called a spoilsport by the little Mussolini in charge.

Whereupon I recommend my own favorite car game: stop at Dairy Queen and drive away while he’s in the bathroom.

Have you and your kids got your $250 tickets to celebrate Miley Cyrus’s Sweet Sixteen at Disneyland on October 5th (Miley Cyrus born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23rd)? Disney’s taking no chances on party guests being thin on the ground; they’ve piggybacked events in a way which would make even Porky blush:

Miley Cyrus is celebrating her Sweet Sixteen at Gay Days at Disneyland.

The 11th annual Gay Days event, which attracted 30,000 gays and lesbians to the park last year, actually takes place October 3-5. Gay Days describes itself as a “mix-in with straight parkgoers,” where the LGBT crowd wears red shirts.

Dress accordingly.

via Defamer

The Munchkin’s teacher has handed out a sheet which outlines an activity to do with your child every day of the week.  We are to pick two of the activities per week, and mark down which ones we have done.

We had already done the “if you had a magic pencil box, what would be in it” question, which led to some entertaining flights of fancy.  These things are meant to be bonding activities which encourage you to discuss things with your child and do things that might normally be a bit out of your comfort zone.

So tonight I thought I would have him complete this sentence: “If I could learn one thing this year, it would be…”

Could he want to learn about quantum physics?  How to dissect a frog?  How to build a robot?  There are so many things my bright boy would want to discover, and I was smiling in anticipatory glee.

The Munchkin paused for a mere second and replied with all the earnestness a five year old can muster, “How to not have to go to school anymore.”

Sigh.

It’s going to be a long decade or so, isn’t it?

from TheSun

The Munchkin is an almost-six-year old who definitely has a mind of his own.

And that mind has no problem letting people, including his teacher, know that he doesn’t like coloring.

He can draw until the pencil or crayon is down to a nub, or until the marker practically runs out of ink.  But coloring? Inside the lines? Madness! It is beneath him! To him, it is gruntwork, pure and simple. 

Unfortunately for him, it seems that kindergarten teachers can be sticklers when it comes to coloring pictures.  Especially when coloring the picture is part of the assignment, not just for prettification.  You know, like coloring in all the triangles red, and all the squares blue.

So, coloring outside the lines is verboten.  Ditto with leaving some white in there.  They prefer that the item in question be properly and completely shaded.  Which, I guess if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right.

But didn’t I hear a while back that children were supposed to be encouraged to color outside the lines?  That insisting they color inside the lines stifled their individuality and creativity?  Say no to conformity, kids, anything goes!

Er, except that particular philosophy is not embraced at the Munchkin’s current school.

I understand that coloring is a fine motor skill.  And perhaps it comes down to committing to doing a task and doing it properly, even if you don’t find it a pleasant pastime.  Still, there is a part of me that is secretly annoyed at the notes about his lack of coloring finesse that are penned on his worksheets.

The amazing and confusing thing is that I have to sit here and beat it into him that he is to color inside the lines, when adults who have the ability to “think outside the lines” are lauded.

Maybe I should have homeschooled. 

Oh, the many delightful, horrifying things I thought of calling this post…the many amusing, appalling things which I shall not use so as to leave them for your deployment in your witty captions in the comments section. Here now, almost late enough to be a Saturday Caption Contest, is our picture for this week. Click to enlarge, if you DARE!

from Good Morning America and Universal Royalty