When I asked my friend Amber to come and slum over here for a guest post, I did so with some hestation. I mean, she’s not only quickly getting really super famous, she’s also very busy throwing lavish dinner parties and putting kids in car seats. As you can see, she said yes. She said yes because–and she begged me not to tell you this–she’s really, really sweet. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her (in a written sense anyway) for many years, so I’ve collected a few of these “sweet” type nuggets and I’m prepared to reveal more of them against her wishes.
Other things you should know about Amber from Parenting. Illustrated With Crappy Pictures:
- She’s one of those people who can take 5 walnuts and some Gorilla Glue and make an end table. Ridiculous amount of effortless style and a raging craftiness, this one.
- You can read her right now at the HuffPo.
- Her children produce the best “That’s what she said” opens in the whole world, and she’s juvenile enough to find them hilarious. Since no one in my house can safely say the word “balls” for any reason, I love her desperately for it.
- And I know you won’t, but don’t believe a word of the madness she spews below. She is funny. Way funny. If you haven’t yet, move that freaking rock you’re calling a roof and get thee to her website, her Facebook page, and her feed on The Twitter.
And so, without further ado…I give the floor to Amber.
When Julie asked me to guest blog over here I got all nervous about it. Because she is funny. She is yet another mom I “met” via a message board many moons ago. Here is the thing about Julie though, she is funny on the message board. I am not. Not now, not ever. I don’t have time for that shit. I just get in and get out. So for her, it must come naturally or something. She oozes funny and great writing in her replies to people, for goodness’ sake. Who does that? Funny people with natural talent, that’s who. Thus, nervousness.
So rather than write something, I decided to just steal her words. To show you her funny. I’m stealing 3 quotes from this here blog. And then I’ll draw why she is right.
On Movies…
#1 – “In a 124 minute movie, a 5 year old will have to pee 7 times.” from 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Take a 5 Year Old to See Captain America
This is true. Even the math. I recently took my 5 year old to a movie that was 70 minutes. Resulting in having to pee 4 times.
She speaks the truth.
On birthday party favors…
#2 – “I even refuse to call them goodie bags. They are baddie bags. Very, very baddie. They are filled with sugar and/or plastic that will eventually end up puncturing one of my toes, and they are mandatory.” from Every Party Has A Pooper
Ah yes, goodie bags from birthday parties. I hate them too. I’ve even been known to try to sneak out before the goodie bags are dealt.
But I always get caught. The mom of the party MUST succeed in getting this crap into our possession.
Why is she so dead set on getting this to us? Because she doesn’t want this stuff in her house either. Nobody does.
My hatred of the “baddie bags” stems from the false hope that he’ll fall asleep in the car on the way home.
Because if there is a bag of junk to dig through there is no chance.
On toys…
#3 – “On top of my refrigerator you will find pans and a rice cooker. Oh, and a big ass box of Misused Toys.” from An Open Apology To The Schmucks Who Got The Stuff On Top Of Our Refrigerator (via Aiming Low)
And this gem?
Yes. Just, yes.
Ours is currently covered with xylophone mallets, toy hammers and assorted homemade Tinkertoy weaponry. When the fridge island becomes too populated, we use our Closet of Misused Toys, also a popular toy destination.
I’m guessing we aren’t the only ones with a special “vacation place” for toys. Peeing trips during movies? Hatred of party favors? Anyone?
Thanks so much for having me guest post, Julie!
frecklesandfickle.wordpress.com 
Thanks for having me guest post, Julie! And I have never made an end table out of 5 walnuts. It was acorns.
That’s what she said.
Thank you so, so much for gracing this spot with your presence. You are FULL of the awesome.
I keep the baddie bags on the top shelf of the pantry. I have to bribe all three of my children and say they can not open the bag until after dinner and so on. Slowly I give them one piece at a time and eventually they forget about it. Then about 6 months later you clean your pantry and viola the bags have returned. I try to throw them out as fast as i can and bury them under many layers of garbage because my kids will pull anything out of the trash can
Now *that* is good technique. We have a little bit of the Halloween candy giving way to the Christmas candy, but I like the idea of the things just shriveling to death in the cupboard.
Hey, just wanted to let you know what I’ve read in the last 2-3 days about the whole halloween candy problem. Some people are freaking geniuses!! In one solution they get their kids to select a little baggie of their fave treats and the rest they donate to The Great Pumpkin. When they wake up the next day, they have a toy or some such thing instead. The other one has them giving away most of their candy to the Candy Witch. (Like the tooth fairy) She brings them money in exchange for the candy.
This is great. Why? Because what is on top of my fridge? A goodie (baddie) bag. 🙂 No joke.
Double score! Ah yes, this universal madness called small sticky humans.
HAHA, me too! That is exactly where the so called goodie bags go when we get home (after of course they rifle through it a zillion more times, as if something new may have appeared since we left the party). I also do death by the cupboard. Eventually I move from the top of the fridge to the cupboard (IF and only if it bypasses the garbage for some reason) and it slowly morphs its way further and further to the back until finally, no one has any recollection of its presence and out it finally goes for good!
I can get away with this on occasion. Over the summer I found some chocolate Easter eggs I’m dating somewhere between 2005-2007. Delightful, I’m sure.
I JUST fished a super bounce ball out of my toddlers mouth after she shook his head no when I told him to spit it out. Then I stuck it on top of the grandfather clock. Not even my 6 year old can find it there. And then 5 minutes later I found one that I hit in the fruit bowl on the counter out of both kids reach.
Superballs are not of this Earth. I like the grandfather clock approach…always looking for new high spots.
Amber, your post is dead on, as usual 🙂 We have a china cabinet that gathers all variety of toys usually used to hit the baby, and my three year old regularly uses his potty stool (the height of which he overestimates greatly) to try to reach the top.
Don’t you love how everything becomes a climbing apparatus? I think they give extra points to things based on their instability.
Oooh, speaking of climbing aparatus – my 20 month old son thinks he can climb anything to reach anywhere and does not appear to have inherited my very sensible fear of heights. So…when I took away the kitchen chair he was trying to scale the cupboards (to reach the cookies hidden behind the giant mixer and flour jar), he improvised. I walked back into the kitchen 30 seconds later to find him standing on his booster seat (which he had taken off another chair) and a couch pillow. Really – I’m starting to feel like he’s on the verge of totally outsmarting me…
@Stephanie, I have that very same thought every day. A couch pillow. Yep, sounds about right…
OMG!! So true. My three year old can scale the cabinents using just sticky fingers and prehensile toes and once he got there he used MY COFFEE MAKER as a stool to get to the top of the fridge because those are the only cabinents in the entire house w/out locks on them and thus where all the good stuff is hidden.
I hear tale of an ancient time when I was a child and scaled the fridge using boxes and everything I can find. The funniest part was that my mom didn’t know where I was until I started babbling at her from the top o fthe fridge. I think I was pretty young (hadn’t started really talking yet).
I had to use the top of the fridge just last week for a toy inside a Kids’ Meal that got used as a weapon on Mommy. Not cool, chick. She got it back after 2 days and has apparently learned her lesson. But yeah, the top of the fridge is where all the toys go for their “time-out” when they’re used incorrectly.
Quite astounding what they can covert into weaponry, isn’t it? They should only give out lullaby CDs and massage coupons in kids meals.
this made me laugh so hard. first because i start putting misused toys in hiding spots long before i had children. when left to babysit my little brother his toy swords ended on top of the fridge within 10 minutes of mom and dad leaving. he still talks about the look on my face the day he walked to the fridge and promptly removed his sword lol. and secondly because there are TWO “goodie” bags on top of my fridge at this moment.
Okay, NOT looking forward to the day when they can just reach up there and get it back. Although when my teenage son gets his cell phone taken away I put it in my underwear drawer, which is just as effective. He’s not touching my lady delicates with a ten foot pole.
This is EPIC!!!
Hahaha, oh the joys of underwear!!!! That made me laugh so hard
🙂 #protip
epic and awesome ! great tip. I have my package of Oreo’s hidden there right now because otherwise I get NONE of them.
I am no longer the mommy of small ones. My offspring is now certain I am a moron and could not possibly understand what they are going through because I was their age, like, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Yes, they are teenagers and I will celebrate the day they manage to graduate high school without killing me.
However, back in the day, I, too, tried to use the top of the fridge as a ‘high hiding spot’… for my permanent markers. I woke up one morning to find that my 4 year old daughter got up before me, climbed on the counter, then somehow got the permanent markers off the top of the fridge… and did a 4 color wall mural in my living room!
Ahhh! Fond memories!
Ohdeargod. I guess if you make it to high school graduation without a Sharpie story you’re not doing it right.
Love it as usual! We have a basket for confiscated toys and actually call it the “Island of Misused Toys” a la the Rudolph movie. And, yes, xylophone mallets are the long term inhabitants. Why do we even pretend the kids will play music with them? Super balls a close second….
I’m convinced that the only people who give children musical instruments are grandparents, arch enemies, and the certifiably insane. I’ve had some brushes with the third, so an instrument or two may have passed through my house.
Ha!! I did my time with little ones several years ago, and can’t wait to be the Nana who buys musical instruments 🙂
Whoa, one of my guest-posters is guest-posting on another guest-poster’s blog. This is too good. I love you both!
Shhhh Debbie! The first rule of our cult is that we don’t talk about our cult!
I so agree with the movie one. Took my 4 year old to see Winnie the pooh and sure enough she had to pee even though we went 2 minutes before the movie started. The best part was when she asked me why they wouldn’t pause it so she could go pee.
so funny to me, because over here (The Netherlands) they actually do pause the movies (almost all of them) and we hate it! 🙂
Ha! Yeah, I think I’d pretty much hate the whole pause thing if I wasn’t the one with the remote.
@Tori, my child is very much under the impression that one can find anything OnDemand or on the Internet. Unfortunately he’s right. Almost every day I’m required to stop myself from talking about how, in my day, we actually had a b & w TV and I had to *get up* and change the channel.
You all are so much nicer than I am. My fridge top is covered in plastic cups, plastic cups full of pens, and bottles of windex. Oh, and the psycho mom in me excels in the disposal of naughty toys. We live in the country with a porch high above a creek that looks out way into the forest. All those toys that get used as weaponry or need a time out or piss me off to the point of seeing red? I take them right out onto the porch and chuck those suckers WAY out into the deep abyss of the woods. I figure I’m contributing to a great archaeological dig one day. And the kids have learned to back off on the toys.
Man, it has to be all kinds of therapeutic to launch those things as far as the wind will take them. With my luck my dog would bring them right back.
ROFL – that would happen here too! You are both hilarious – now I need to follow your blog too, Julie!
Yeah, I agree. My kids won’t go into the rubbish bin for the most part, so I just chuck things right out! If something is really firmly attached, I’ll put it in the bin overnight, they rarely ask for it the next day.
Yup to almost all of them. I haven’t taken my daughter yet to the movies, but I suspect it’ll be the same thing. I keep a “craft” box on top of the fridge. But it’s really just “junk” and since I love throwing parties, I actually give out really good loot bags. Healthier types of snacks like apple sauce, granola bar, organic lolly pops and home made small keep sake loots and stickers.
See, we need to go to *your* parties. A granola bar I can handle 🙂
Goodie bags didn’t exist when we were kids. The most you got to take home from birthday parties was a balloon and a piece of cake.
Mum used to keep our sweeties in one of the kitchen cupboards and would dole them out after tea. My brother decided that although he would get into trouble if he climbed up to get them, I’d probably get away with it. Mum came in to find me climbing the handles of the kitchen drawer handles and my brother cheering me on!
Okay, confession. My mom used to tell me that if I had more than one of my chewable Flintstones vitamins in a day I would die a horrible death. I think it was the combination of wishing to prove her wrong and the pure deliciousness of the verboten, but I sure did scale those cupboards and eat nearly a whole bottle. This is all probably just payback.
Hah, top o’ the fridge is our home for toys on time-out, too!
This should be a hint to homebuilders, right? We need high ledges and ways to suspend things from the ceiling!
I’m taking a stand against goodie bags at my daughters’ parties. It’s silly – more useless crap that nobody needs or wants. Sugar is already taken care of via the birthday cake. Nuff said.
I see this being the most successful Occupy ever. Occupy Party City and don’t let a single plastic frog or bag of Double Bubble come out.
…I am SO with ya, sister.
I did away with baddie bags at my son’s party this year, instead I gave each child a bucket of sidewalk chalk with a personalised thank you lable on it hehe. Messy? Yes. But instead of having sugar crazed terrors running around, all the kids went home and quietly did some chalking outside. You’re welcome 😉 Actually all the mum’s said it was a great idea and the kids loved it so will be doing the same at my daughter’s party 😀
Slow clap, mama. That is brilliant and I am 100% stealing it. Built in entertainment, a favor that will get used until it disappears, and a *thank you note* all rolled into one. Niiiiiiice.
The best part was the buckets of chalk were only $2 each =D
I take all that useless junk and put it in this MASSIVE clear candy jar on the kitchen counter – within reach even – and I am NOT kidding – not a soul in our house touches it ! It is a miracle. They will eat 5 month old stale marshamallows covered in dirt and lint found tucked under a cupboard on the filthy kitchen floor, but they will not eat candy out of this jar…I won’t eat candy out of this jar. There is candy in this jar that was put in it during the Clinton administration even…NO JOKE!! Halloween, Easter, Christmas…..Birthday “Baddie” bag treats – they get the jar!
I laugh when their friends come over and ask if they can have some candy from the magic candy jar – my response….”knock yourself out kid!
No way! So it acts like a force field? Daaay-um. I may have to try that!
I can’t believe this worked…when the goodie bag candy gets too much (after parades, etc.) I suggested to my 5yo that maybe we could help refill the candy jar in our church office. Now, we can’t go there without a ziploc bag full of jolly ranchers and Frooties! Yeah!!
That’s pretty genius too. There are too few opportunities in general to give away candy for the greater good, but that fits the bill. I guess I pawn off a lot of food on my coworkers, but that’s because the break room is like a scene from The Road. Could serve old cheese on a dirty sock and it would disappear I say;)
well you will be happy to know, Amber, that if you ever find yourself at a birthday party for one of my kids, I don’t waste my money on so called ‘goodie bags’. I don’t want my kid having all that crap, so why am I gonna give it to somebody else’s? What is a kid at my son’s birthday party going to get? A healthy lunch (probably subs or something) some homemade cookies, a peice of cake with whipped icing (I hate buttercream) & a fun time. That’s about it 🙂
Amen.
My least favorite memories of the baddie bags involved the crap inside breaking the minute we arrived back home.
“Oh, I’m sorry. The plastic parachute guy got all tangled? The string on the three-inch paddle ball snapped? The mini-slinky got kinked?
Yeah. Because it’s CRAP!”
Nothing like bringing your kids home covered in cake and high on dreams of goodie bags only to have them in tears and seemingly greedy and selfish.
Happy birthday!
(Hilarious guest post, Amber. And I loved getting to see some of Julie’s other stuff since I’m kinda new here. You guys? Are both walnut-and-Gorilla-Glue wonderful. Or acorns. Either way. End tables are a necessity.)
This is EXACTLY what happens. Those mini slinkies…for the love. The plastic. parachute. guys. I’m getting the shakes just thinking about those effing things.
On goodie bags: I always get them and though I hate them I felt compelled to arrange them for my daughter’s recent 4th bday party at a petting farm (as if I already didn’t give each parent the gift of sticky hands covered in oats and goat spit). We got rained on. We got a shitty picnic table with no room for goodie bag display and I forgot to hand them out! I was all horrified and like, “I HAVE to get these bags out- or all the moms of 4 year olds will be like “what the H? She didn’t even have goodie bags!” So I told my husband i’d MAIL them with thank you cards. A few days past by and I was imagining my friends’ faces receiving all this stuff right before naptime when the mail came and thought better of it. I actually don’t even know where they are- they were on the dryer and then they just sort of …um went… somewhere. Okay! I had a few snack attacks! Don’t judge me, moms! NO Goodie bags! They’re in my belly!
I think I can speak for all moms when I say you will not be judged, only applauded. You earned those snack attacks, and you spared a bunch of people some serious grief. Just as you said–you provided the goat spit, all bases covered. Bless you.
I’m totally devoid of creative ideas, but I copy others gleefully. When my son went to a girl’s 2 year old birthday party, the goodie bag was a large plastic cup, personalized with my son’s name. I don’t remember what else, but it was a great cup (we still use it for pencils today, and my son is now 18). So for my son’s 2 year old party, I made homemade playdoh in two colors, and put a small fistful of each in plastic take-out containers with lids (the 2 cup size). Another year small plastic colored translucent lunch boxes were available at the dollar store, I personalized them for the few guests with fabric paint, stuffed them with some colored chalk. Since my son was sensitive to sugar, I didn’t hand out that junk. We trick or treated one year, then my son was miserable, so we never did it again. Halloween is just a night to hang out together as a family, watch a fun movie together, and wait for November 1st to come around.
I love those ideas. We don’t have parties every year, but this year we had a get together at a pool so I gave all the kids themed CDs and sunglasses. They seemed pleased–just giving them something to put in their hands on the way out does the trick;)
Definitely with you on super balls and goodie bags. I have yet to experience the island of lost toys, though. I try to pocket those items (the small ones anyways) and sneak them into the bottom of the trash when the kids are asleep. If I don’t bury it she always finds it and takes it out of the trash to play with it again.
I’ve had a few of those meltdowns. “Why did you throw [broken piece of crap] away!?” Always hide, always deny.
I once had to put a whole box of Duplo on the naughty shelf because the girls where trowing it at each other… and the cat, who does not like such behaviour and who was starting to climb the curtains.
Ah yes. Objects to torture the dog are all up there too. Protect and serve efforts are not helped by the fact that our dog would never complain, no matter what kind of horror they dish out (or think about dishing out).
Egh this reminds me…with my little ones birthday coming up I have to produce such garbage. I have in the past only invited one guest and sent them home with a real toy instead of junk…their parents thought I was nuts…
That wasn’t a look of “you’re nuts”, that was a look of, “bless you”. 😉 I love the one kid parties actually…soooo much more mellow.
I have just one daughter and goodie bags have been banned from our house since…forever. I do run a home daycare though. And I never make goodie bags, though I do love all of the babies I take care of. I have a cabinet full of banned toys. No giant T Rex, no motorcycles, no toys that have 5 million parts, no sticks or anything that can be made into a drum stick….. It’s true, I feel so much better now!
Ugh, drumsticks. Ugh. With a daycare, I’m sure you have a very streamlined process and know how to spot the troublemaker toys before they strike.
We have a giant T Rex who frequently gets in trouble for fighting with the Robosapien.
I’m extremely impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Anyway keep up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see a great blog like this one nowadays..
Thank you, Cruises Out of Baltimore.
For my son’s 5th birthday, we had a dress-up theme (come as your favourite storybook character).
I got the Roald Dahl books as a set from the book club for just over £1 each and gave the kids a book and a lollipop each as a goodie bag. The kids were as pleased with the books as the lollipops and I loved not spending a fortune on instantly broken/useless plastic tat.
I’m trying to get over the price on those books long enough to comment. What a deal!
Those are the kinds of favors I love. Something that will actually be *used*.
Top of the fridge! Yes yes yes! And his art that he just immediately destroys but I want as a keepsake!
Too funny, Cindy. The art seems to come home in piles around here, but sure enough…the stuff I really want to save he tries to tear apart:)