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Magoo came home from a birthday party last week and told me they’d eaten cheese-flavored cake. After a brief retch as I imagined a block of cheddar covered in frosting, I figured out what he was talking about. Why does his name sound so revolting and the other so delicious?

Although she’s been known to ingest her fair share of playing cards in her day, Wanda has discerning tastes when it comes to real food. She likes her rice cereal done just so and only sometimes. She enjoys fruits and occasionally tolerates vegetables if the moon is in the proper phase.

Wanda begins each meal with her jaw clamped tightly shut. You can press the spoon against the thin line of her lips. Nothing. Na-da. She will not budge. If you happen to squish in a small amount of food, she will savor it thoughtfully and if she finds it a worthy specimen, she will open her mouth and give it entrance into her digestive system.

Wanda likes the taste of food better after it has been spat out 2-3 times. The yummy food goes in and then – SQUERCH – she spits it through an amazingly small opening in her lips with incredible speed and distance. I scoop it up off her bib, the tray, my bib, the wall and stick it back in her mouth. When the food is eventually seasoned to her liking, Wanda humors me by swallowing a bite and we proceed to the next.

I think the truth is, she believes in quality family time around the dinner table. Why rush through a meal when you can spend a nice evening with your peeps, eating and re-eating and re-eating your dinner one. bite. at. a. time?

The hardest part of dinner with Babida Bubbida Boe is swabbing the neck. It’s nearly impossible to find the neck and once you do, you have to pull back so much “skin” to clean it that the grand finale of most meals is a big fat scream fest. And I just have to say in my sweetsiest voice, “But Wanda, I love you too much to let food rot in your neck folds.” Tough love – it’s a choice I make every day of my life.

“What’s the difference between sage parental advice and annoying lectures? Honestly sometimes I’m not sure.”

[Read More at Parenting.com]

I could hear their bickering from upstairs and tried to ignore them. Soon it spilled out into the hall and shortly Laylee was at my side with her arms folded.

“Mom! Magoo’s being so mean to me.”

“Yeah?” I asked, with a bored tone to my voice.

“Mo-om. He’s being so mean, like really really mean,” she continued, visibly distressed.

“What did he do?”

“He was calling me ‘Laylee Middle Name Thompson’!”

NO! He dared to call you by your NAME!? Like your full NAME!? That I gave you!?

I’m trying to think of a punishment for that particular crime. I’ve got nothing. I could call him by his full name but that doesn’t escalate things at all and I’m all about escalation. Maybe I could also start referring to all of his body parts by their correct biological names, his fingers becoming phalanges, his jaw becoming a mandible. I don’t know though. It’s just so MEAN…this proper name-calling.

Magoo’s had a few problems with yogurt in his life. I didn’t realize quite how many until a couple of days ago when he asked for some and then started telling me the Rules of Yogurt, one at a time. He listed 7 rules, each specifically related to times he’d gotten in trouble because of his use or misuse of yogurt.

1. You can’t leave the yogurt out.
2. You can’t lick the spoon and put it back in.
3. You do it CAREFULLY.
4. You can’t break the bottom of it.
5. You can’t get a handful of yogurt.
6. You can’t get it until you ask a grownup… or your dad.
7. You have to put it back.

I like the fact that rules one and 7 are essentially the same but bear repeating because they have been emphasized on so many mornings when we’ve found the giant tub of yogurt sitting out luke-warm on the kitchen table.

I also like that Dan is not classified as an adult.

I also like that we need 7 rules about yogurt… so far.

It seems that more and more everyone just calls everyone by first names, like we’re all chums, BFFs, equals. As much as I choke on the “Mrs. Thompson” moniker, I like what it stands for. It means I’m an adult with life experience and authority. It means I’m responsible to protect and care for the little ones in my life because I’m not a peer, I’m a mother. [read more at Parenting.com]

“Her happy dance consists of lying flat on her back with her dip-cone mohawk vibrating, her eyes bugging out of her head, her lips pursed, and her arms flapping at her side asynchronously like two uncoordinated metronomes beating different times atop your grandma’s piano.” [Read more at Parenting.com]

If “gentle babies” use “gentle baby wash,” what do “ferocious, violent ninja babies” use?

As we pulled out of our driveway today there were three deer and two chickens on our lawn. We own no animals.

Magoo: Do you know animals can talk?

Me: Oh really? Do they speak English or talk in some other way?

Magoo: No, no. They just comm-une-icake.

Me: What do you mean?

Magoo: If they bark or say meow, or moo, that’s talking.

Me: Ok.

Magoo: There’s one animal that does a CRAZY communicake. It’s a cheetah. When a cheetah wants to communicake, it does a big jump while it’s running, and then it bites you and scratches you all over.

Someday I may get to the point where in order to write a blog I have to think my own thoughts or be creative. I may have to come up with deep analysis about the State of the Union and why our country is caricatured by a group of politicians who sit in a room together once a year listening to a speech with one half looking like their cat was just murdered and the other half acting like they’re at a high school pep rally while a small group of men and women in black dresses sit front and center looking like a constitutionally-armed firing squad.

But as long as my kids are teaching me that cheetahs communicate by rabidly mauling people to death, I don’t have to get too serious with my commentary.

When Dan read the back of the packaging on the Transformer we bought Magoo for Christmas (WHO DOES THAT?!) he asked me why we chose the stoner Transformer. Perhaps because “we” were shopping very quickly on Black Friday morning and “we” never read the fine print on Transformer packages and “we” didn’t know there was a perpetually wasted children’s toy for sale at Target.