Comments on: Your Toothpaste Is Now, Officially, Dangerous

By: fencer

fencer — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 05:14:07 +0000

Great post…

You got me chuckling with:

“Now, if there was some plot to blow up airlines using action figures, we’d be in a world of hurt.”

Regards

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:34:56 +0000

Oh Edwin I’m such an idiot. I got the lyrics, not the actual singing. I’m sure my inbox can handle mp3s; it’s just me that’s the problem. Thank you! xxoo, BL

By: Edwinek

Edwinek — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:18:43 +0000

Er… sorry? What I really asked was whether your inbox could cope with two MP3′s, before I dent them. So if you’ve already found them in your inbox, where did they come from? Me little man, mightily puzzled!

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 18:09:31 +0000

Hey AC — i saw a cartoon someplace of two children in a playground. It’s dated 2010. One child is taunting the other. The taunt? “Your mom blogs about you.” Let it be said here that, when the chips are down, the BlogLily boys do clean up beautifully.

Courtney — I’m not sure I’d call it camping exactly. They’re staying at a family cabin in the woods near a lake. No scones. How could you tell? Lots of mosquitos and swimming. My husband stashed a big old windsurfer there last year, and this year he managed to get a sail on the plane. I guess those have not yet featured in any plot. So I guess they’re also floating across the lake on the windsurfer, even as we speak.

By: Courtney

Courtney — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 17:16:08 +0000

Wow, your husband is…a saint. Or something close to it. That trip sounds…fascinating. Are they camping? I never imagine people camping in New England – I imagine them visiting quaint rickety old bed and breakfast places, eating scones and drinking tea for breakfast. Something tells me the trip is…not that.
Enjoy your time to yourself, bloglily – it’s precious!

(You’ll notice I fail to say anything about the no toothpaste on planes and other horrors. There are, no words, right now, really. I wish your children and nieces and nephews ruled our world, that’s for sure.)

By: AC

AC — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:46:39 +0000

They’ve got the right idea! They remind me of my little brother, also allergic to grooming. I shared a room with him on vacation and always asked him, “Did you brush your teeth?” –”Yes.” Finally, I told him that if he was going to lie, he should at least take the toothbrush out of the package.

I just spent a day travelling and there was very little in the way of qualitative difference, so the Bloglily boys are NOT off the hook!

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:19:13 +0000

Helen, that does sound awful. Did you have to taste his formula water to prove it wasn’t poisoned with something else? How very medieval things have gotten. I’m glad you got home safely and admire you for making sure you had those pain relievers in your pocket. (Not to mention the elastic band.) The “no excluding” rule is very important to the six year old — the greatest tragedy in his life is that he will never, ever be older than his brothers or his cousin. This is why ever other day he asks when I’m going to produce a baby sister for him. (Ha, I say, NO WAY!)

Hello Emily — Wow! It sounds like YOU know how to have fun. Your day of play must have been terrific for those children. I love your description of people who run out of the house and throw themselves at you. It’s astonishing and wonderful how children so freely express their emotions, and when those emotions are loving ones it’s just plain magic. As litlove said upthread, children are innately sensible people, and they can be the most amusing of companions, particularly when things are relaxed, and you’re not also trying to do other things. What I find most difficult is handling the need of all three for my attention. Maybe because I am a younger child (I am fourth in my family of five children), I am especially attuned to how it feels to have gotten there last, but I think all siblings wish their parents could just pay attention to them. The jockeying for that can be fierce and although perfectly understandable, it’s tiring. But I do miss them — they’re energetic and fun and so different from me that I feel like I’ve landed on a different planet. Still, right now I’m still in bed and drinking tea, so loneliness has its compensations!

Edwin: thanks for the music. It took my inbox a little while to recover from the shock of being spoken to in two languages, but I did find it. Power to the children, indeed (as long as we’re not handing them power tools, anyway. [groan])

By: Emily

Emily — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:16:46 +0000

So, are you missing the boys yet, Bloglily? Although having no children of my own, I’m a lunatic like your husband. I absolutely love to spend time with children, often preferring them to adults (I once spent an entire business party at the art museum in San Francisco playing in the upstairs exhibits with a colleague’s seven-year-old daughter. Best business party I ever attended). I spent a fabulous evening last week with two young friends aged 9 and 6, eating pancakes, building domino houses and long lines of dominoes to knock them over, and playing Yahtzee. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if your adult friends all raced out of the house and threw themselves at you to greet you, making you feel like the most important and welcome person on the planet, every time you came to visit?

By: Helen

Helen — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 12:13:08 +0000

Grrr, these terrorists. I’ve just done a nightmareish 30 hour journey from UK to Sydney and I wasn’t allowed *any* hand luggage, no comb, no toothpaste, no toiletries of any form – although I did smuggle through an elastic band (and four Panadol – crafty!) For the baby, I was allowed “essentials”, which meant heaps of awkward stuff that was impossible to transport in clear plastic bags, and I had to taste his formula water. What is the world coming to?! The baby had to do without the bath-in-the-basin I had planned for him in Singapore but, as a member of the Kids Rule Lobby, he was as happy as Larry.

I hope your kids have a good time with their cousins, Bloglily. They sound so cute. I like the rule “No Excluding”. If only the world could listen to that.

By: Edwinek

Edwinek — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 10:02:03 +0000

Which reminds me of Herbert Grönemeyer’s fabulous song “Kinder an die Macht” (Power to the children):

http://german.about.com/library/blmus_groeneOTH02.htm (German)
http://german.about.com/library/blmus_groeneOTH02e.htm (English translation)

Both on “Sprünge”, one of his best albums. Is you mailbox big enough for a couple of MP3′s?

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 04:44:55 +0000

You know, when I wrote this it did occur to me there was some kind of conspiracy going on. I just hadn’t thought about the KRL. And, in truth, I know many people do believe kidz are in charge already and that has led to a complete deterioration of public spaces, like cafes where you just want to read quietly without a bunch of yelling or on airplanes (ditto). But those are the Bad Kidz. The kids who should rule the world are the nice ones, the ones who prefer hugs and kisses and inside voices. Those are the kids who’d make a no-homework rule that extended to adults, and then nobody would work late or on weekends and we’d all have time to see how far we could stretch out the cheese on our pizzas and see who has the loudest burp (but not in public, of course).

Thanks for stopping by Mr. MoJo and preaching the doctrine of Kidtopia.

By: secretmojo

secretmojo — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 04:35:45 +0000

Hmm. Perhaps the toothpaste ban was instigated by the ultra-secretive Kidz Rule! lobby. If that’s true, then children may indeed have some power to rule the world….

Utopia is at hand!

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:31:48 +0000

The word “lunatic” does come up quite often in reference to this behavior. Still, they’re all pretty nice, fairly well behaved children and he seems to like their company more than that of many adults. What this says about the company we keep I don’t know, but i’m also grateful he’s turned out this way. It was not at all clear, twenty years ago when we met (he riding a skateboard, with headphones on, me thinking: what a lunatic) this is how it would go with him. You cannot predict everything about a person, that’s for certain.

By: Dorothy W.

Dorothy W. — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:16:18 +0000

I’m sure people DO love your husband for being willing to take care of a bunch of kids — it sounds like an absolute nightmare to me, and I just don’t get people who love doing it. But it’s wonderful they exist!

By: bloglily

bloglily — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 18:42:10 +0000

toothpaste and paper! Your poor A-Z. It would be interesting to chart where that innate wisdom goes. Quite possibly, many adults have it still. it’s just that the nastier ones seem to push themselves into the places where the most damage can be done while the nice adults are busy sending thank you notes and picking up the garbage on the side of the road.