RazNoggle

A friend posted this on FB and I thought it was hilarious, ha ha, so here ya go for a few chuckles!

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out…
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

This is all very tongue in cheek; anyone who is parent will say ‘it’s all worth it!’ Share it with your friends, both those who do and don’t have kids. I guarantee they’ll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you’ll need when you become a parent!

I’ve mentioned on here before some of the issues that we have with getting the lads to bed. I have to confess that besides whining this is the thing that wears me down in parenting the most. I hate, absolutely HATE fighting with the boys to get them to bed. We’ve tried various tactics with more or less success but nothing that has really stood the test of time with them. But not one to be daunted, I have a plan!

Our bedtime routine has become sloppy to say the least. Part of that is because the thing that “works” the best for getting the boys to bed is to have Myles go down first and hopefully be sleeping by the time Bubba goes to bed. The problem with this is that it really elongates the bed-time routine, and it’s become less and less successful because Myles is getting old enough that he stays awake till his bro comes in and then it really begins to become a fight because they want to play! Ugh!

So here’s what I’ve come up with. I ordered, just today, a MP3 DVD of ALL 450 Bible stories from The Bible in Living Sound. The cool thing about it is that they give you a code to get the Audio DVD for FREE as well! Woot! It’s a pretty big chunk of change at once $75, but I looked on Amazon and you’d end up paying $.99 per track if you ordered them separately. So it’s actually a HUGE savings especially with the 2 for 1 deal. So if you’re looking for some great dramatized Bible stories for your own little monkeys, check this out. The second one would make a fantastic gift!!!

Where does this commercial come in to the bed-time routine, you may ask?

Ahh, glad you were wondering. Here’s how it’s going to work out in our house. At 7pm sharp our bedtime routine will begin. I’m working really hard at coming up with ideas to keep it a “happy” time. So I will commence by saying, “Time to get ready for bed” (then before the whining starts- I’ll have to talk fast) “Lets get jammies on and have a SNACK!” Snack is a magic word in this house that is always met with enthusiasm! Then we’ll do just that! After the snack of a graham cracker or something we’ll brush teeth! They also like the teeth brushing thing. Immediately following the tooth cleansing we will have a story from our Jesus Bible Story book and one other book of their choosing. (2 stories!) THEN comes the tricky part. They will go to bed together! Hopefully this will be close to 7:30. Once in bed I or Stu will sing them their favorite bed songs “Sunshine” and “Jesus Loves Me” and then turn out the light. They’ll have an MP3 player (read iPod) on their dresser loaded with the story selections for the evening. Hopefully the way it will work is that they will listen to the stories till they “drop off” rather than get in trouble playing. I know for a fact that they like to listen to something other than their noise maker when they go to bed so I’m really hoping that this works out. It’ll give us another “tool” to promote compliance as well because if they do decide to get up and play the stories will be turned off.

That’s the plan anyway. I’m going to stick to that routine TO THE T for at least a week before we allow any variations. I want them to get it down and know exactly what comes next and what to expect each night. I hope that it works, and I’m anticipating that it will, but I still do have a bit of that “dread” feeling. I have this idea in my mind that bed-time can be a sweet time with our kids instead of a constant battle. Maybe that’s not realistic, but I’m going to keep fighting for it because every day shouldn’t have to end with battles!

There ya have it. Check out the stories, they have a spot on the home page where you can listen to a sample. They are so well done!