Top 10 Signs You May Be a Parent Who Needs to Get Out of the House More Often
Nov 18, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column, Top 10 Lists
10. Whenever you drive up to your daughter’s daycare, all of her teachers yell, “HIDE! It’s Skylar’s Mom! You know, the woman who NEVER shuts up?”
9. You have developed an unhealthy crush on Steve, the host of Blue’s Clues;
8. When you log on to Facebook, it sighs, “YOU again?!”
7. You think “Jeggings” is the name of the latest Duggar kid;
6. You often wake up humming the tune that your daughter’s annoying toy cooking pot sings: Cream It! Steam It! Eat it on the cob! Corn…
5. The last movie you saw in the theater was Over Her Dead Body;
4. The biggest laugh you’ve had all week is when the Wonder Pets were passionately singing, “Save the Beaver!” (I’m not going to lie: That still makes me laugh.)
3. You have asked Frank, the Diapers.com delivery guy and new BFF, to be the Godfather of your next child;
2. You have lost sleep wondering if Cookie Monster has an eating disorder. (Seriously. What is UP with that binging and purging business?)
1. You are so desperate for adult interaction, that you have even started responding to spammers’ e-mails: Why, yes, I would LOVE to hear more about your penis enlargement business!
Did I Mention I Have a Baby?
Nov 16, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column | Tags: The Mom Card
BACKSTORY: On Monday mornings, there is nowhere to park within a mile radius of Skye’s daycare because of street cleaning, parking regulations, blah, blah, blah. AS IF MONDAY MORNINGS AREN’T BAD ENOUGH. So, being the good citizen that I am, I usually park illegally in the driveway entrance while I quickly drop her off. As I did this past Monday.
DAYCARE ADMINISTRATOR: Um, I think you’re getting a parking ticket.
ME: Shit!
I look over at the table of impressionable one-year-olds.
ME: You didn’t hear that.
Then I run like hell towards my car, where Parking Enforcement — also known as “The Most Thankless Job in the World” — was indeed making a big deal of punching my license plate number on his hand-held parking ticket printer.
ME: Stop! Please! I was just dropping off my baby.
EVIL PARKING ENFORCEMENT: Your baby, huh?
I tenderly hug Skye’s sippy cup to my chest.
ME: Yes, my baby goes to daycare here. And there’s nowhere else to park.
EVIL PARKING ENFORCEMENT: You’re lucky I haven’t started the ticket yet.
ME: I am. I really am. MY BABY and I appreciate your understanding.
EVIL PARKING ENFORCEMENT: But you shouldn’t park here, you know. People with strollers or wheelchairs would have to walk around your car, onto the street –
ME: As the mother of A BABY, I completely understand what you mean. Never again.
EVIL PARKING ENFORCEMENT: Have a good day, ma’am.
ME: Sa-weet! Playing the mom card is even more effective than trying to cry my way out of a speeding ticket! (NEVER worked for me, by the way.)
Shameless
Nov 15, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column
As y’all know, trying to adopt a cat hasn’t exactly been easy for us so far, with competition and overextended, unresponsive volunteers seemingly working against us. Frustrated but not defeated, I decided to be even more proactive and go to a cat adoption event on Saturday — but I also knew that walking in there with a boisterous 15-month-old wouldn’t necessarily work in our favor. So I did my best to make said boisterous 15-month-old look a bit more, um, appealing to the foster kitty parents.
What do you think? Too subtle?
Well, it worked at first — those cat ladies ooohhh’d and aaahhh’d over the “adorable shirt” Skye just HAPPENED to be wearing (*AHEM*) — until, that is, she proceeded to take her sippy cup and bang it on the six-thousand-page application that I was filling out, getting milk EVERYWHERE and making my ink run. They stared at her, then stared at me, clearly not so sure about my parenting skills, SO…
… I did what any good prospective kitty mom would do: Told the volunteers I was just babysitting for a friend. (Hey! I can’t have that kid holding me back.)
The Doomed Do-gooder
Nov 12, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column | Tags: Cue the Violins
A few years ago before I was even thinking about having a child (also known as: The Years When I Thought “Yo Gabba Gabba” Was a Hip-Hop Sorority), I was overcome by how fortunate I was and decided I wanted — nay, I needed — to give back. So with my chest puffed out, thinking of all the “good” I was going to do, I proceeded to e-mail and call no fewer than ten organizations, primarily ones involving children. I spent hours filling out on-line applications, volunteered to do things such as mentor kids from abusive homes and waited for the places to clamor for my OH-so-generous services.
Not a single one of them responded to my outreach. I suspect it’s because any prospective volunteer with the name “Candy” is automatically placed on children’s organizations’ DO NOT WANT pile. Either that, or my reputation precedes me.
But STILL…! NO response? Am I not even worthy of taking out the trash? Hath not a woman named Candy eyes? If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you tickle me, especially my feet, do I not laugh like a goofy hyena? If you poison me, do I not insist that you NEVER make meatloaf again? (Yes, I am looking at you, Mr. Candy’s Mom.)
To have my free work rejected by so many organizations and charities was, well, odd to say the least. I ended up fulfilling my do-gooder need that year by volunteering at a homeless shelter on Christmas — a grand idea shared by, oh, five-hundred other Angelenos, so I was politely asked to throw my fast food gift certificates into a collective bucket and go on my way. Merry Christmas, indeed! Now Mr. Candy and I just sponsor a couple of kids with Save the Children and throw a buck into Daniel Baldwin’s coffee cup when we see him on the street corner. My ego can’t handle any more rejection.
Don’t you just love how I make a story about charities a pity party for MYSELF? Leave it to a (pseudo) only child!
But seriously, guys. I am cursed. You see, pretty much ever since Matty passed away, I have been searching for a new fluffy household member. That may seem a little quick to some people — Mr. Candy couldn’t even handle thinking about another cat at first — but it is my way of dealing with the grief, plus… a way to extract the ball of fur that has been attached to my side ever since Matty died. That’s right: Marcy has been terribly lonely and I am eager to get her a friend. Hopefully a friend who doesn’t, you know, terrorize her as Matty was apt to do when he felt like thumping his chest (BOYS — they’re all the same, I tell ya). This time, instead of a breeder, we would like to get a kitty from a shelter or foster home. Yeah, motherhood has made me go all soft. So I have searched a ton of Web sites, e-mailed at least five foster homes and left voice-mails at two shelters.
Guess how many responses I have received?
*Sigh* I seriously need to change my name to Mary. No animal shelter could reject a prospective kitty mommy named Mary. Or, better yet, Oprah.
A Mother’s Selflessness and All That Jazz
Nov 8, 2010 | Filed Under: Mr. Candy
At Skye’s check-up this morning:
DOCTOR: I see she has the sniffles.
ME: Yeah. Nothing new there.
DOCTOR: Well, we should probably hold off on giving her any shots, just in case she does become sick because shots can make it worse –
ME: Good idea. My husband is away for the week and I do NOT have the energy to take care of a super-sick baby all by myself.
DOCTOR: [A PAUSE, THEN:] PLUS it’s just the best thing to do for Skylar’s health.
ME: Right. That’s what I meant. I am most concerned about my daughter‘s welfare. Not mine. Of course. Ha, ha! *Ahem*
Toot! Toot! (Shameless Self-Promotion Alert)
Nov 8, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column | Tags: Tooting My Own Horn
Last week…? Not the most stellar. [CUE THE VIOLINS] My cat died unexpectedly on Sunday. My Grandma Kirby passed away on Friday. And, perhaps most traumatically of all, I went to pour myself a bowl of Chocolate Cheerios on Thursday, only to realize I had finished the box the night before.
What I learned during this time of mourning: The only thing sadder than my week, is the sight of a grown woman licking the dust off the inside of a cereal bag.
Which is why I was particularly delighted to receive some much-needed good news on Friday: Popular parenting site Babble.com has honored The Laughing Stork as one of its “Top 50 Mom Blogs” and, cooler yet, as one of the top-10 funniest of the group (#7, to be exact — not that I’m, um, keeping track or anything). Here is the write-up:
This is not a mom blog — no. Candy Kirby’s The Laughing Stork is a humor site, a literally laugh-out-loud humor site that just happens to reference the funny side of parenting. A former writer for The Bold and the Beautiful (hey, we all get our start somewhere), Candy covers everything from pop culture to her own relationship with her husband. And if it has a parenting angle and she can make a joke about it, she will.
This isn’t a blog that tackles the serious issues, and that’s why we love it so much. And Candy loves her readers right back — so much, in fact, that she’ll respond to your email, right after she finishes microwaving her daughter’s Hungry Man dinner!.
Pretty nice, huh? It is so heartening to be recognized, especially when I see The Laughing Stork listed amongst such fabulous and more established sites — hey, wait, back up a sec. Did they smirkingly say, “Hey, we all get our start somewhere”? Oooohhhh, burn! No love for B&B. I guess some people don’t see the literary genius in dialogue such as:
SALLY: I don’t give a rat’s behind about becoming the next Picasso. Truth is, there’s only one thing I really need, one thing I really want — Spectra Fashions… (HOLDS UP PAINT-SPLATTERED HANDS) … back in my dirty little hands, where it belongs!
Yeah, okay, maybe Babble does have a point. (That dialogue was, indeed, lifted from one of my old scripts. I kid you not.)
So please join me in raising a glass of bubbly — or something stronger, if you’re already having a week like I did — for a virtual toast to Babble.com for lifting my spirits with this honor, to you, my dear readers, who make it all worthwhile, to all of the other “Mom Blogs” on the list (as well as the many wonderful blogs that prefer to fly under the radar), to Mr. Candy, Miss Skye, Ms. Marcy and Mr. Matty (R.I.P.) for providing me with endless material and, above all else, to keeping extra boxes of Chocolate Cheerios in the pantry.
Cheers!
Fun challenge for the day: Find a way to casually work “I don’t give a rat’s behind about becoming the next Picasso” into conversation!
Skye’s Law of Universal Gravity-Defying Poop
Nov 7, 2010 | Filed Under: Babies, Candy's Column | Tags: Fun with Diapers, Sklyar
There is a popular story that Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree, an apple fell on his head, and BOOM! He thought of the Universal Law of Gravitation. But not before screaming, “Damn! That freakin’ hurt!” and plopping himself under a less ornery Sycamore tree.
Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I actually consider myself a modern day Sir Isaac Newton — you can totally see it, right? — in that we both, um, like apples. Yes, we practically share a brain! So it’s not surprising I had a similarly mind-blowing epiphany this morning: While I was lifting my daughter out of her swing, her butt and my hand unexpectedly became covered in something wet, and BOOM!
I suddenly realized that baby excrement DEFIES GRAVITY.
For those who are less scientifically inclined, allow me to put it in layman’s terms: Regardless of how snug a diaper is, or how flat or horizontal a baby is lying on her back, the newborn’s poop and pee possess the ability to shoot upwards and ESCAPE the diaper — thereby wetting a baby’s entire back, swing/chair/crib/bassinet, and parent’s hand — all while scoffing in the face of this so-called gravity thingy.
If it would please the panel, I would like to submit Skye’s Law of Universal Gravity-Defying Poop:
where:
RR is the Ruined Romper
M is the milk
NGP is the Nasty Green Poop
BOP is the Big Ol’ Piss
GS is Gravity Schravity
This most frequently happens when the romper was JUST PUT ON THE BABY. Still not convinced? Okay, Miss Cynical McCynicPants. I will just have to submit some photographic evidence to further support this Law:
As you can see, the newly-fed baby is happy. Her belly is full Her romper is dry and clean.
And THEN…
BOOM! Struck by gravity-defying poop!
Even you non-physicists out there have to see I TOTALLY deserve to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Or, at the very least, to be knighted a “Sir” by the Queen. That’s right: It’s Sir Candy, bitches! Isaac Newton and Elton John ain’t got nothin’ on me.
Mr. Candy, Evil Mastermind
Nov 4, 2010 | Filed Under: Candy's Column
BACKSTORY: Our 15-month-old loves taking baths so much that she never wants to get out of her duck tub. Like, EVER. Wrinkled like a prune? No problem! She is more than happy to resemble a fruit laxative. And if we should be rude enough to grab her out of the tub after, say, 40 minutes of splashing and reading about Mimi’s freakin’ toes for the four-hundredth time that night, Miss Skye will SCREEEAAAM and throw her wet, slippery body back and forth and side-to-side — making it so hard to hold on to her that I have seriously considered calling upon a salmon fishing crew to help bring her to shore.
So, yesterday, Mr. Candy bounds down the stairs after giving Miss Skye a bath — without a trace of sweat on his brow. I am immediately suspicious.
ME: Skylar is… clean?
MR. CANDY: (NODS) I think I’ve found an evil way to get her out of the tub.
ME: Oh yeah?
MR. CANDY: Pull the plug and drain all the water while she’s sitting in it.
ME: That is evil. I LOVE IT.
US: Bwa-ha-haaaaaaa!
