5 Minutes for Parenting's weekly column, A Dose of Humor, is here to remind you to take your humor pill regularly as the best medicine to treat the side effects of parenting! It features a different blogger every week and is hosted by Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity in My Subjective Life. Now you can also join in by linking in your funniest moment of the week, using the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post!!

Hi! This one's from me this week.  Hope you enjoy!

Have you noticed that there are a lot of different theories on teaching toddlers about anatomy?

They are all very different, all have their pros and cons, but it is imperative that you take one of the strategies and run with it, because we all know that toddlers find the naming (and exploring, especially boys) of anatomy very important.

Some parents take the medical approach. When you are around these toddlers, you will hear them using quite grownup and shockingly anatomically correct terms. They will leave no question in ANYONE'S mind regarding EXACTLY what they are referring to.

Then some parents take the cutesy approach. These toddlers can be heard saying things like "wee-wee", "hoo-hoo", "hiney", "booty" and "booby".

The third approach (that I know of - please let me know if I've left out your preferred approach), which is the one that we have used so far, is the vague approach. We call things "parts", and your tummy begins below your neck (or "neck sugars", as Ali calls it) and ends at your "parts".

There are definite pros to this strategy - one being that you don't turn red from your toddler yelling out "my (insert body part here) hurts!!!".

Or, as one of our friend's children went through, finding great joy in yelling out the word "BOOOOTY!!!" at the top of their lungs. Or, when feeling especially gleeful, yelling in quick rapid fire, "BOOTYBOOTYBOOTY!!!!!!"

Because let's face it: booty is much too fun of a word to not be tempted to say it.

(Go ahead. Try it. Give BOOTYBOOTYBOOOTY!!! a shout and you'll see exactly what I mean.)

At any rate, as I was saying, yelling out "PARTS!!" isn't going to cause too much of a stir. Nor is it going to be as tempting to yell out in the first place.

However, there are certainly downsides to this vague approach as well. Lately: tummy confusion.

Since approximately 97% of my friends are pregnant right now, I have been having a lot of conversations with Ali about "babies in bellies" and how people with babies in their bellies have bumps on their bellies where the babies are.

(I know that you think you know where this is going by now, but trust me - you don't.)

(Unless you are Alice, then you do).

Anyway, we were at lunch with my neighbor Alice at Edgar's Bakery on Thursday. A nice, cultured, girly place. We had finished eating and were chatting. Ali was down and running around, inventing games for herself.

Then, all of a sudden, she felt the need to come over and inspect me.

She was looking intensely at my "upper tummy" (you know, right below my neck sugars), and, as if she had just noticed this for the first time, started stroking my, ahem, bumpy chest, and saying confusedly (and quite loudly - somewhat exclamatorily even),

"Mommy has a baby in her tummy? Mommy doesn't have a baby in her tummy. Mommy's tummy bumps? Mommy doesn't have a baby in her tummy."

Then she would point to her bump-less tummy. "Ali doesn't have a baby in HER tummy."

Then would jab me forcefully. "Mommy doesn't have a baby in her tummy?"

I kept trying to tell her that I did not, in fact, have a baby in my tummy, but she was determined to get to the bottom of this bumpy mystery.

This went on for quite some time, and Alice was highly amused and giggling across the table.

So of course, I tried to deflect at her, for revenge.

"Does Alice have a baby in her tummy?"

No luck. Ali looked at me, said with a rather bored and know-it-all tone, "uh uh", and kept poking at my bumpy tummy, and repeatedly asking questions about what was housed inside it.

So the moral of this story is: there is no approach to anatomy that will keep your child from trying their darndest to embarrass you.

Just accept the fact, pick your strategy as best as you can, and brace yourself.

This post was originally published on May 23, 2009 at Grasping for Objectivity in my Subjective Life.

If you would like to be considered to be featured in A Dose of Humor, email Rachel at doseofhumor (at) gmail (dot) com.
Join us and link up your funniest moment of the week here!!!

By Beck

"MOM! THE BABY IS EATING THOSE LITTLE BEANS GROWING IN THE FRONT YARD!"

I went into the living room to find my son freaking out and my youngest kid with her hand full of little green seed pods, plucked from a tree in our yard.

"I thought they were little baby green beans!" said the Baby, pouting. I told The Girl to help The Baby rinse out her mouth and looked up the plant online.

Locust plant, I looked up. Okay, I knew it wasn't the honey locust… what was the other type? The black locust. That's the one.

And what I read next had me frantically punching in the numbers for Ontario's Poison Control hotline and desperately saying into the phone that I thought that my four year old had eaten something REALLY poisonous.

All mothers have that moment, I think, that split-second thing that changes an ordinary day into stark, unbearable terror. My oldest child got rushed to the hospital before she was 1, suspected of having the same stomach problem that killed my mother's youngest brother when he was just a toddler. My son fell down the stairs and was unconscious before he hit the bottom step, pulled a free-standing dishwasher onto himself, caused me to call poison control a dozen times. And each time it was the same feeling, this moment of utter heart-racing horror.

The poison control nurse was upset too, but was trying to keep me calm. Could I get someone to quickly verify that it was, in fact, a black locust plant? And then I was to call an ambulance as quickly as I could. I ran out of the house, straight into an acquaintance carrying her newborn baby in her arms.

Do you know plants, I said, probably rather hysterically.

Yes! she said. I do. Her baby looked at me with his solemn grey eyes.

Each time I've been so scared with my kids, there has been that moment when it became obvious that things had turned around, that everything was going to work out - the doctor walking down the hallway with the relieved look on her face, the stupid dishwasher being lifted up to reveal that my child had been so quiet not because he was gravely hurt but because he was FURIOUS, and the moment when a friend held a flowering plant in her hand and said, brow furrowed, that she didn't think it was a locust at all.

"I wish you'd TOLD me that you thought that was a poisonous plant," my husband said to me later that evening. "I ate those beans all the time when I was a kid. Siberian Pea Shrubs are everywhere around here."

I called back Poison Control after everything was all figured out and The Baby had been comforted ("You mean I'm not gonna die?" she asked me, lip quivering. OUCH.). Another nurse picked up the phone, and I told her who I was. "Oh, she told me about you!" she said. "She was real upset, and said some poor little girl had eaten something really poisonous." She thanked me for calling back and then went back to her work, telling other mothers sensibly - and impossibly - to calm down now, to just tell her what happened.

By Kelly

Ever since I was a little girl, I've been fascinated by cotton candy.

Maybe it was because it was such an rare treat. In the days of yore (read: the 1970s), cotton candy was reserved for the circus or the fair or some other infrequent-but-storied event. I loved to stand next to the cotton candy booth and watch the proprietor swirl a thin, paper cone in a seemingly empty bin and emerge with a cumulonimbus cloud of gossamer pink, precariously balanced on a tiny point.

"Here you go, sweetie," he would say to the lucky buyer, who would carefully take hold of the beautiful concoction and delicately try to find a place to bite.

So it goes without saying that, when our church was looking for volunteers to work at various booths during the annual community picnic, I jumped at the chance to work in the cotton candy booth.

It was a gorgeous Sunday night in late summer. The sun shone brightly; the light already held flecks of autumnal gold.

After the outdoor service, Corey and I gathered the kids and scooted through the dinner line (hot dogs, carrots, watermelon and chips) since I was first shift at the booth.

And that's how I found myself standing next to a machine that was spinning a cloud of pink sugar, clumsily wielding paper cones around the circle, passing off lopsided mounds of cotton candy to a throng of eager children.

The night was breezy, and I was near the edge of a picnic shelter. The wind caught errant wisps of candy and blew them into the crowd. Kids waiting in line opened their mouths to pluck a sparkling sample right out of the air. Delicate strands stuck to my arms, my face, my hair. (So intent and gleeful was I as Cotton Candy Maker Extraordinaire that I discovered this fact only when small children grinned my direction and shouted, "Mom, look at her hair!")

Halfway through my shift, I looked up and saw my daughter before me. Natalie was wearing plaid sherbet-colored shorts and a pink polo shirt. Her skin was tan, her hair pulled back in a pink headband. She looked utterly delighted.

“Why Natalie!” I exclaimed, as if she were my favorite customer, which, in fact, she was. “So happy to see you here tonight! Here you go!” And I handed her a cone heavy with sweetness.

“Thanks Mom,” she giggled, before turning to find Uncle Jon among the crowd.

Later, on the way home, when she was crashing like a little addict from an overdose of sugar, she sat in the back of the minivan and sobbed because the snow cone booth had run out of syrup before she'd gotten one. Suddenly, she sat up straight, found her composure and said, “Mom, do you know why I stood in your line to get cotton candy, besides the fact that yours was pink and that’s my favorite color?”

“No, Natalie," I answered, scanning her face in my rear view mirror. "Why?"

“Because you are my favorite person, Mom,” she said. "And I love you."

This post was originally published August 2008 on Kelly's personal blog, Love Well. She's at family camp this week, where she is too busy following her toddler around camp to write something new. But she'll be back next week, rested and refreshed, and extra happy for the toys at home.

By Veronica

1. When I was pregnant with my first child, I visited a friend who had two kids. She had a lovely home, and a dining room set that still looked like new. So new, in fact, that the upholstered seats of the chairs were still covered in their original plastic.  She kept it on so they were easier to clean.

And I thought to myself, "That looks tacky. I would rather clean a chair a hundred times than leave plastic on the seat like someone out of Mama's Family."

Now that I have four small children, and have scrubbed and scrubbed the upholstery of our dining chairs a hundred times, I want to say to my old friend C, wherever she is: I wish I had left the plastic on my chairs. You were a wise, wise woman. I was a fool.

2. Every time you think you have finally become used to the stench of soiled diapers, it gets worse. The progression of hellish stink goes like this: breastfed infant < formula-fed infant < infant who eats solids < infant who eats meat or cheese < infant who drinks cow's milk < multiple diapered kids.

You have been warned.

3. You may think that tv show you love has nothing inappropriate in it, but the first time you watch it with your children around, the plot will take a sudden swerve to include the murder of a prostitute by a foul-mouthed, racist, embezzling schoolteacher with herpes. The big networks plan it that way.

4. A brontosaur is no longer called a brontosaur. If you call it that, your dinosaur-loving children will look at you like you are speaking Martian, and you will lose all credibility with the four-year-old set.

And what about you? What have you learned the hard way?

Veronica can usually be found documenting her steep learning curve at Toddled Dredge.

By Megan

I went to find Bean in the waning hours of a neighborhood party last night, in the filtered, sparkling light of dusk, to take her home with us for the night. I crossed the grass of two back yards and saw her shoes haphazardly kicked on the back porch next door and I looked at them for a long time, those shoes a symbol of so much to me - her joy, her freedom, her love of these summer nights (and summer days) among all the people she loves so much.

And then I heard her shrieks of glee and looked up from my reverie to catch a glimpse of her, her wild blonde curls bouncing and blowing in the wind as she ran around a rich, green, grassy corner toward me. In that instant her face absolutely radiated with happiness and belonging - her beautiful smile lighting up every corner of her, and every corner of me, too. I looked at her, thought a moment, and walked back to the party. I just couldn't be the one to make her leave, this time.

So I sent her father.

He sauntered off and came back minutes later with his daughter in his arms. I looked into her eyes, searching to find out how this abrupt end to the fun time with friends made her feel. She wasn't grinning anymore, but as she lowered her head to her father's shoulder and relaxed into the safety and comfort of his strong embrace, I knew she felt as joyful as she had just minutes before, perhaps moreso. And peaceful. She had the peace of knowing she was with her Daddy, who would safely and gently carry her tired little body home.

Al's mother, Carrie Bell, for whom Bean is named, passed away this morning. She was 90 years old. I know that although she'd grown frail and feeble, her Father found her with a happy, full heart and swept her tired body up in his strong arms to carry her home, just like her precious eighth son did her twenty-something-eth granddaughter less than 12 hours before. I know her face is peaceful, her soul full of joy to be snug in the arms of her Father, whom she has loved and trusted and believed in her whole life long.

Praise God and thank You for Grandma Carrie Bell. Thank you for her strength, which came from you, for her love and faith and joy and wisdom born of sitting at Your feet all through her long and sometimes difficult life. A wonderful mother and wife, she gave her children and husband and extended family and community every ounce of herself, and will forever be one of the standards I'll hold myself to as I continue to care for her son and grandchildren. Hold her tightly, God, and please be with her family, those who will go on for a while without her and miss her every day, but in whom she still lives on because of her love for You, and for them. Amen.

By Mary

The other day my nine year old was having one of those terrible horrible no-good days. He was picking fights with everyone in sight and complaining about everyone, whether they were in sight or not. I grabbed him and playfully wrestled him over to the couch to sit snuggled against me. He put up a token resistance, just to prove his bad humor was serious. But by the time I had him on the couch, he was trying to hide a grin, and we were well on the way to a better mood.

First I let him spout off what he was mad about: a brother not sharing a video game. I asked him for a solution. He suggested that the unkind brother make his bed. I countered that the unkind brother really should shovel out the horse pen.

“Yeah!” he said enthusiastically.

“Or what about the driveway– I really think it needs to be scrubbed,” I said. “Maybe with a toothbrush.”

His lips twitched, but he again agreed enthusiastically. We went on in that vein for a couple minutes, suggesting increasingly silly punishments for the selfish brother, with each new over-the-top consequence bringing on more giggles.

Soon his mood was receptive enough that I was able to remind him that people do not always have to share their treasured possessions, and that he himself sometimes did not share. We brainstormed things he might be able to offer the brother in trade for sharing the game for awhile. Within minutes his mood had turned around enough that he was able to go try again with his brother, using the ideas we’d discussed. I would never have influenced his mood that powerfully with a stern ‘buck up– your brother doesn’t have to share’ lecture.

Since I am a fairly serious person, I have to consciously remind myself to go for the laugh. My husband, on the other hand, gets corny with the kids almost effortlessly. When he does, the children glow. And listen. No matter what your parenting tendencies are, humor can be a powerful ally. Try it today—you may just find that more effective parenting is as close as your kid’s funnybone.

Excerpted from A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family (Gibbs Smith, March 2009)

Mary Ostyn is a writer and the mother of 10 children. You can also find her writing at Owlhaven.

By Stephanie

So, the other day Gray swallowed a penny. Darn it if I thought I'd get to bypass this milestone. What kind of Mother am I that my three year old was able to put a penny in his mouth and swallow it? On my watch! Well, I'm the Mother of a three-year old, that's what kind I am.

I don't know about you but my three year old might be part monkey, and one day I found him on top of the stove (it was off) and another time he was scaling the fridge, so anyway. There's not much out of his reach.

I thank God that I can laugh and write about the ingestion and later exit of a penny and not instead read about its tragedy in a headline in the news. But, in all seriousness, we avoid and fight head on dangers every single day. Sometimes parenting feels like I'm just doing my best to get them (and me) to survive until Daddy gets home.

My heart aches for those not so lucky.

Stephanie Precourt is the managing editor of 5 Minutes For Parenting and also blogs at Adventures In Babywearing.

5 Minutes for Parenting's weekly column, A Dose of Humor, is here to remind you to take your humor pill regularly as the best medicine to treat the side effects of parenting! It features a different blogger every week and is hosted by Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity in My Subjective Life. Now you can also join in by linking in your funniest moment of the week, using the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post!!

Today's Dose of Humor is Brought to you by Kristen of No Small Thing, who introduces herself as follows: I am a stay-at-home mom of 4 young children. My days are filled with storybooks and homework; naptime, diapers and laundry; boo-boos and  boogers – oh, the boogers.  There are crumbs on the floor (we need a dog…), and sticky fingerprints on the windows (I have learned to live with that.  For now.)  It is a time in my life that is very challenging, but there are moments that are like epiphanies in which I see just how beautiful my life really is.

The following events occurred on October 23, 2007.  They are worth revisiting…

Today I was walking around Target, trying desperately to pick up a few things for supper, along with a couple outfits for Ella, since she has very little that is warm to wear.  We were running out of time, she was getting fussy as we had been perusing the food isles for about an hour and had finally made it over to the baby clothes section.  I had been prodding Henry along the entire time…”put the taco shells back,”  “we’re not buying candy,” “don’t touch the wine!!!”

As I’m zipping through the isles in the baby clothes section, I hear Henry rather loudly ask me

“Mom, can I eat this booger?”

I begin to walk a little faster and ignore him, hoping he will either 1)wipe that booger off on something; or 2) just eat it and get it over with.  Again, I hear–only louder this time–

“MOM, CAN I EAT THIS BOOGER?”

Again, I ignore, and slip behind a rack to try to distance myself from this 3 year old boy, who at this point I am sure is just trying to get a rise out of me.  He knew very well that I would not want him to eat that booger.  I am now sure that all of the moms in the baby clothes section have heard the booger question, and are looking around trying to figure out which kid it is that wants to eat the booger.  Oh, it must be that one over there, the one with the bright red hair and the huge black booger on his fingertip.

Henry asks AGAIN.  To add insult to injury, (as if I could have possibly NOT heard Henry ask his question 3 times), the previously silent William decides to make sure and asks,

“HEY MOM, HENRY WANTS TO KNOW IF HE CAN EAT THAT BOOGER.”

I now understand that this booger issue is not going to evaporate as I had hoped, so I rifled through my bag for a tissue, but there was nary a tissue to be found.  As quickly and as quietly as I could, I said “NO.  Just wipe it on the floor Henry.”  Of course, Henry can’t hear so well, so he says “What?”  and William says nice and loud so that Henry (and all of the other nice, clean, respectable moms who are now peering through the clothing racks to watch) can hear

“SHE SAID JUST WIPE IT ON THE FLOOR!”

So, with that, I gathered up the few shreds of dignity I had left, paid for my groceries and went home.  As for the booger, not sure where it ended up.

This post was originally published on April 14, 2008 at No Small Thing.

If you would like to be considered to be featured in A Dose of Humor, email Rachel at doseofhumor (at) gmail (dot) com.

Join us and link up your funniest moment of the week here!!!

By Beck

I was looking at pictures from a few years ago - and is this ever a good idea? I suspect not - and was just stricken by how small and child-sized my Boy was just minutes ago. Now, of course, he is as tall as kids in grades above him, tall and sturdy and deep-voiced.

"You're a big boy for grade 3!" the dentist told him the other day, and The Boy was able to tell him, BURSTING with pride, that he is actually only in grade 1.

There is a big downside to this, besides subtly breaking my stupid, stupid heart - people expect the poor kid to act like someone years older than himself. And short of having him wear a t-shirt that says "I am really much younger than you think I am", we're not sure of what to do.

"He'll just have to act the way people expect him to," my husband said. "It's not fair, but if everyone expects him to be mature and he's not, he'll have a really hard time."

So we sat him down one rainy afternoon and talked to him. You're gonna have to act like a big boy, we told him. And then the rest of the day the poor kid walked around with thunderstorms crackling under his face.

"You know that I am only a little boy," he finally burst out. "Everyone else won't know it but YOU should, mom."

"Goodbye, my mommy!" yelled The Boy this morning, kissing me on the face and accidentally hitting me with a lunchbag as he leapt off the front steps on his way to school, laughing in the dappled summer sunlight. And right in the middle of this sunny, happy morning, there was this secret bittersweet core,  this knowledge that I will have to pretend to be content with the changes that time will bring while inside I feel small and sad. I don't know what it is I want - to freeze, maybe,  that beautiful, clumsy leap off the steps by my Boy, tall and radiant and vulnerable and just a little boy, still.

By Kelly

I set my squirming, squealing 17-month-old daughter into the bathtub last night, then ducked around the corner to grab a towel and washcloth out of the cabinet.

Her rage was immediate and deafening.

I apparently didn’t have permission to leave her side – to split atoms, as it were. In her mind, we are one right now. Mama-Teyla or Teyla-Mama. Always together, never apart.

Until we are. And then the world tips off its axis and threatens to implode under the weight of her mingled sorrow and wrath.

I don’t remember separation anxiety at this age with my older two children. (Of course, most days I feel grateful to remember my name, so maybe it’s just that my brain is melting like a snow cone in August.) They had their moment of tears in the nursery and their times of pouting when my husband and I would go on a date.

But this sweet little baby – she isn’t just sad when I walk out of the room. She’s furious that I would have the audacity to leave her behind. Even leaving the room ahead of her, especially if I need to walk around the corner out of sight, is grounds for a tantrum.

Lucky for her – and for those who’s eardrums are within range – I don’t leave her that often. And at this age, it’s easy to round the corner, pick her up and set everything right again. It only takes a tight hug, a couple of tickles and a reassurance that “Mama is still here.”

I only wish it could always be that easy.

Kelly-Teyla also blogs at Love Well.