Offsprung

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August 2009 Blog Posts (45)

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Getting Your Butt in the Seat

Over the summer, a TV commercial for Harry Potter 6 boasted that the movie had the “biggest worldwide opening ever!” I found this interesting, as this is not the kind of claim that would have been made 10 years ago. However these days, the business of the entertainment business is more transparent. Add this to the fact that the landscape of movies has gotten more crowded and competitive, and this means that Hollywood is now trying to hype their movies by any means necessary—which is why… Continue

Added by Reeling on August 31, 2009 at 7:00am — 8 Comments

Joe Cool, Back in School

Photobucket



Every rite of passage begins with the ritual of shopping. Heading off to college? You’re going to need some dorm room furnishings. New job? New clothes. Getting married? Martha Stewart will tell you what to buy, starting with a subscription to her Weddings magazine. Expecting your first baby? Time to take those first tentative steps down the abundant… Continue

Added by TykeGeist on August 30, 2009 at 10:38pm — 11 Comments

Birthday and the Bridge

On birthdays and empathy. Enjoy...

Birthday and the Bridge

Added by Floor Pie on August 28, 2009 at 8:06pm — 3 Comments

mega mindy abducts budding chef

A superhero swiped my sous-chef. He was here a minute ago, banana masher in hand, all covered in flour, dipping his pre-licked fingers in the brown sugar and then, *SHAZAM* vanished. Gone. History.



In saunters this saucy, stacked, scarlet thing and she just stands there, striking a pose. She's calling me "mama" (how DARE she?) and insisting I speak to her in Dutch. I ask her if she's seen Jules and she says she hasn't, but I know better… Continue

Added by sproutsinthekitchen on August 26, 2009 at 10:28pm — 3 Comments

sleep-deprived dreams of apricot cake

(posted here first).



I've been tired. Horribly tired. Anemically tired. Nobody in my house sleeps enough. Especially me. I feel like I can hardly write a coherent sentence, let alone wax poetically about food and my budding little chefs.



I've come to a few realizations lately, enough to probably fill a few posts,… Continue

Added by sproutsinthekitchen on August 26, 2009 at 9:02pm — 3 Comments

The Heartbreak Of Unwanted Guest Turds

Dear Alternadad:



Why is it when any of my son's friends come over for a play date, they all seem to like to use my bathroom for Number Two?





Unlike adults, who tend to only poop in their home toilet or in the well-appointed lobby stalls of high-end hotels, kids will lay down the law just about anywhere that's convenient, including park restroom stalls usually frequented only by the insane or the extremely sexually repressed. And if your son's friends are… Continue

Added by Alternadad on August 26, 2009 at 3:06pm — 7 Comments

Wow, I guess he really is a grown up

I have two much younger siblings. The eldest of them is ten years younger than I. All three of us are close, although I don't get to see them much, but I'm especially close with the eldest. He's my bubba.



We've had a rough few years. He fathered a beautiful baby girl with an absolutely nuts, cruel girl who is also a heroin addict. Two weeks after the baby was born, our dad killed himself. 8 months after that, our grandma, with whom we both lived, died. And those are just the high… Continue

Added by Mamawho on August 25, 2009 at 7:49pm — 3 Comments

Funny People

I remember AJ's first joke. He was two-and-a-half and whenever I came home from work, he would run up to me with his hands out wanting the change in my pockets. Shiny things, you know. This particular evening, his Mother did the same. I gave AJ the coins, 38 cents or so, and told him to share with his Mommy. He looked down at his treasure-filled hand for a moment, selected a single penny, and pressed it to his mother's palm. The mischievous glint in his eye left no doubt he knew exactly what he… Continue

Added by Don't Forget to Flush on August 25, 2009 at 11:00am — 5 Comments

Terror In The Sky

Dear Alternadad:



In about a month's time, I will be flying from Phoenix to Detroit with a three-year-old and a 13-month-old. Alone. The three-year-old will have her own seat. The infant will ride on my lap. First off, am I crazy? Secondly, what is the best battle strategy to get everyone from one gate to the other alive?



First of all, you're not crazy for traveling alone with your children. People do it all the time, and have done it, if contemporary animated… Continue

Added by Alternadad on August 24, 2009 at 10:39am — 11 Comments

Cautionary Tales

My mom is a drug counselor, but not just any kind of drug counselor. She doesn’t work with potheads and alcoholics, or spend her time at a lovely rehabilitation unit housed in a hospital, but made to look “homey” with quilts and prints of ocean waves. Instead Mom counsels people who are, in the common parlance of rehabs, “dual diagnosis.” These are people who have a serious mental health issue, like schizophrenia, and a serious drug addiction, like methamphetamines or heroin, at the same time.… Continue

Added by Terrible Mother on August 23, 2009 at 11:26am — 21 Comments

Embracing Our Inner Griswold

“We're all gonna have so much f**king fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our g*damn smiles.” – Clark Griswold



Earlier this summer, my sister took this photo of our nephew enjoying a visit to the National Arboretum:



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One of her co-workers saw the picture and paused to reflect. “That’s my kids on every trip we ever took… Continue

Added by TykeGeist on August 22, 2009 at 10:51pm — 12 Comments

Step One: Announcing an Engagement to your Stepchild

Last week, Buglet’s Dad slipped a ring on my finger and officially became my Future Husband. And I became not only a stepmother de facto, but a future stepmother de jure.



With my mind flooded with stories of how my own blended family of origin was slapped together (with less foresight than one slaps together a sandwich) I wanted to make sure we were making it official consciously.…



Continue

Added by Stepping In It on August 22, 2009 at 6:00pm — 9 Comments

Closing the Book on Family Vacation V. 2009

This is the final segment of a two-part series chronicling the wacky adventures of my extended family let loose in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the resulting lessons I learned on the trip, which in Part 1 of this series comprised the following: Uncles are easy targets for vehicular homicide, and The Old snack a lot, especially when being driven hundreds of miles by a reluctant chauffeur.



The remaining insights gleaned during Family Vacation 2009 can be summarized… Continue

Added by Hausfrau on August 21, 2009 at 7:00am — 2 Comments

As my summer vacation comes to an end

I’ve had a very pleasant summer. Yeah, some minor complaints, but relatively calm, cool, and collected. I managed to change my work schedule so that I work on weekends from 7:30pm Friday until 6:30am Monday. We’ve got partial daycare set up for the Boy. He’s at daycare Mon, Tues, and Thursday. He’s with me Wed and Friday. I only had one class this summer term, so I had time to both procrastinate and get everything done right for school. And I’m off from school this week. Ah, summer… Continue

Added by Don on August 20, 2009 at 10:17am — 6 Comments

Man Up Already: Parenting the President through the Health Care Debate

by StitchyWench



My dad has been working up in Alaska for the past six months. Last month, he came back home for a short visit. We were fortunate enough to spend several days at the family beach camping… Continue

Added by Use Your Words on August 19, 2009 at 11:46am — 10 Comments

Mmmm... Power-pop Meets Cartoons... Drool...

RobbertBobbertStill.jpg So I kicked off my blog on Offsprung 2.0 with punk music for kids. But I admitted then that my tastes ran more towards quirky They Might Be Giants-style indie-pop. I'll get to TMBG soon enough, but I also have an affinity for a good power-pop tune.



I have two words for this, the video for "We R Super Heroes," from Robert Schneider's debut Robbert… Continue

Added by Zooglobble on August 18, 2009 at 7:43pm — 2 Comments

Don't Take Your Lesbian Moms to Hooters

The Canadian musical comedy My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, which became the hit of the 2009 Fringe of Toronto Theatre Festival in July, will be expanded for a run beginning Nov. 7 at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto, reports Playbill News. The new version will include a larger cast and new songs, in addition to the… Continue

Added by Mombian on August 18, 2009 at 4:30pm — 6 Comments

Let the floodgates open.

So nothing ever happens to me slowly, in a spread-out manner. I have a good time period of calm, I get used to the way things are, then suddenly EVERYTHING appears at once.



My last major temp job ended June 30th. Two days prior to that, a few of us on the project were offered in on another long-term temp project, and I took it because, well, there was nothing else and this was at least 3 months' work. Later that day I got an interview for a job. I eventually didn't get that job when… Continue

Added by Herasmus B. Dragon on August 17, 2009 at 7:37pm — 5 Comments

Happy Birthday and Homesick

Today, GirlWho is 7. Holy crap!



She's been out of town for two weeks, visiting my in-laws. While I would prefer that she not yet be away from DaddyWho and me for that long, I also think it's important that she spend time with family on her own. I want her to get to know her dad's family, because they really are a neat, big, group of folks. But I've hardly talked to her since she left. I had planned on talking to her every day, but I didn't want her to think I was checking up on her,… Continue

Added by Mamawho on August 17, 2009 at 11:18am — 8 Comments

Raiders of the Toy Chest

Despite terrible reviews, GI Joe is a big hit. So are the overly long, noisy, nonsensical Transformers movies. It’s clear that these flicks aren’t popular because of quality; they’re popular because people have a soft spot for the toys on which they are based.



Some have accused Hollywood of being bankrupt of new ideas, but I what’s really going on is that Hollywood has brilliantly figured out that if they sell it to us, we will re-buy our childhood from them—in shiny… Continue

Added by Reeling on August 17, 2009 at 4:30am — 15 Comments

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