As If You Needed It

Further proof that I lack the maturity necessary to be a parent: Every time Dora says "unicorn" in spanish, I swear she's saying "Cornholio."

Just in Time for Spring Break

Last spring we drove to Orlando, and there was lots of stuff I meant to tell you about.

Then the months got away from me and I thought: I'll just wait and post it next year, so it will be "topical" again.

Right.

So, this is what I wanted to tell you:
1) Playground Find
2) Roadtrip Ideas
3) I'm a terrible blogger.

I'm going to go ahead and post this right now - assuming it will take me another several months to get my act together.

In the meantime, you can tell me about what you did for Spring Break this year. Because while I took a week off, I spent it at home, answering work emails. Yep, I can even half-ass Spring Break.

Huggies Blowout

Oops. I guess they thought they could sneak in their Hapless Dads campaign while all the penised parent bloggers were distracted by the Dad 2.0 Summit. Nice try.

The internet's abuzz and dads are rightly outraged. My husband is no longer buying their diapers.

Granted, my household's brand loyalty was built solely upon the diaper's "available for a reasonable price at Costco" feature.

Bump is too busy caring for the children to engage in philosophical debates over how dads are perceived by society. He's too busy preparing for a fantasy baseball draft to discuss his feelings about the depiction of fatherhood in ad campaigns. He's fast-forwarding through all the TV commercials anyway.

Also, we no longer need diapers.

Right. It's mostly that last thing.

Because we're still fully pull-up dependent, and I'm pretty sure Huggies makes the pull-ups.

But the "Dad Test" ad insults me. (Wait, this is not all about me?)

Those moms still exist, I suppose, who martyr themselves on the altar of Only *I* Can Do This Right. Who relish the idea of being validated when her partner in parenting flails and fails without her. Who can't finish her rant of HOW COME NO ONE APPRECIATES ME because she has to stop in the middle of it to tell you how you're doing something wrong.

Is this campaign for her?

Because I really hate her.

But then, I don't buy diapers.

Rawr

Yes, Aunt Bob is right (Aunt Bob is always right), at least Three-and-a-Half is cute.

Oh HAI

Hey look, Three-and-a-Half is back in our lives. And Three-and-a-Half is still an asshole.

Somehow I had forgotten that. Or I hoped that Two-and-a-Half was so miserable it meant that Three-and-a-Half wouldn't be so bad. Or would skip us altogether.

I was wrong. Woe.

Half-Ass Household Tip #1

Because I know this site is the first one you click on for helpful household hints.

(And I put a "#1" up there in the title, but honestly, if I'm half-assing it right, there won't be any more. Because after this one, I'm kind of tapped out.)

So: Are you like me? Is your maple syrup actually maple syrup, and not maple-flavored corn syrup?

PRO: It tastes a lot better. CON: Instead of a convenient squeeze bottle with a log cabin or a mammy on it, it arrives in a glass bottle or something with a top that looks like this.

Now, I know you think you can use something like that to adorn your children's toaster waffles. But you can't. You will spend months trying to achieve the perfect angle, one that does not leave you standing in the kitchen for fourteen hours over now-cold waffles and won't deposit a huge glop of syrup in the wrong spot.

Let me tell you: that angle does not exist. Something about the viscosity of the syrup and the rate at which it leaves the bottle . . . okay, I'm making that shit up. Ask the Mythbusters or something. But I'm telling you that you will end up with unsatisfactory syrup results. Every time.

This is what you should do. Go buy one of these:

This is a candy-making one from a craft store, but I've also seen them at party stores and kitchen places. Sometimes they're called ketchup and mustard bottles. They're super cheap - I think this one came in a set of two for less than a dollar. (I'd get the clear ones, though, so you don't mistake it for another condiment in your fridge.)

Ta da! Perfect syrup placement, every time. You can draw faces or swirls on pancakes, or place decorative dots in each square of a waffle. Or, if you're like me, you can just squirt it on haphazardly and rejoice that you're not cleaning huge globs of syrup from sleeves every damn morning.

You're welcome. Now, where did I put that tiny red cap?

Reprise

Nathan Jr found this hat in the toy box.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MAH BABY?

So, That Was a Thing

When the first Promoted Tweet slipped in, I was confused.

When the second one showed up, it prompted an internet search.

By the third, I was annoyed enough to quit using twitter. Sorry if you've been posting all your best stuff in less than 140 characters, but I am no longer reading you over there.

I Bet Netflix Has Erratic Handwriting

Netflix is totally turning into that tragic crazy chick from college, isn't it? First it was all those drunk emails from Reed whatshisname (I'm raising prices! I'm splitting into two companies! Why don't the boys think I'm pretty?) and lately I feel like Netflix is threatening me. Those emails entitled "How was the picture quality on ______?" feel slightly menacing. I'm monitoring your viewing habits, and I'm ready to tell your spouse about them at any time. Don't think you can just stream Mannequin 2, then delete it from your queue before she sees it. Don't you take me for granted, dammit. I'm cuter and thinner than she is. Wait, don't run, I bought you some flowers. . .

Lego Ninjago

Are your kids as into this as mine are? Oh, the love. They can't wait until Wednesday night, when the next episode airs. Even Lula is hooked, rooting for the little sister who kicks ass and is promised that with patience, she will also be rewarded.

We watched some of the videos on the Lego website, and things took a turn for the unfortunate. There's a clip of the girl character, right properly kicking butt while one of the boys waits outside, trying to muster the courage to ask her out. When he hears a sign of trouble and swoops in to help, she's already taken out the bad guys (and has a pretty new bracelet too). The bad guys are mortified that they have been "beaten by a girl," but they're bad guys and not very bright, so it's possible to spin that into a not horrible moment. But why is this clip on the website, and not in the show itself? Scared of alienating the boy audience, are we Lego? ("I'm a white male, aged 18 to 49, everybody listens to me. Ah, nuts and gum, together at last.")

I'm willing to let it go, time constraints, maximizing the target audience and all, but in the next clip the girl character calls her brother "Stupid," and well, let's just say my children reacted as though she had just called him a Fucking Fuckwad. No, wait, it would have actually been better if she had called him a Fucking Fuckwad. Because in my house, stupid is a very powerful word that we might, in very dire circumstances, use to describe things; but not ever, ever use to describe people. And Nya, the only character Lego has given my daughter to identify with, drops the S-bomb on her brother. Bravo.

You know, the last time I used the word stupid in my house was to describe the new "Girl Legos," come to think of it. I told a friend that "making some of the bricks pink and making the minifigures look stupid is not the key to grabbing a girl audience." Lumpyhead was in the room and looked at me very gravely and whispered "You said stupid," and I retorted "and that's what I meant" and he trumpeted "I think they're stupid too" and we had to talk about things grown ups can do but kids can't. Like drink beer. So thanks for that.

So, what's my point? I don't have a point. I've been sick for three days and the nyquill has only half kicked-in and I can't get that damn theme song out of my head. Oh, and Nathan Jr is using everything he can get his hands on to spinjitsu his brother and sister, so we've got gold stars for brilliance all over this damn joint. Bring me some tea.