Mommy Shorts

10 Things I Learned Trick Or Treating With A Toddler

1) If you are trick or treating with more than one todder, "Who Rings The Doorbell" is both a contentious and competitive part of the process. Be prepared to divert, distract and enforce the fine art of "taking turns".

2) Toddlers are an excellent way to check out your neighbors' houses or apartments. Just let him/her wander in, make a huge show of calling them back knowing full well they won't respond and then act "embarrassed" and "apologetic" when you have to run inside and retrieve them. (So THAT'S what an eat-in kitchen looks like! Is that a Viking stove??)

3) One out of every ten toddlers will go as "Child Of A Mom Who Didn't Love Me Enough To Ignore My Massive Tantrum And Force Me Into My Dinosaur Costume".

4) The city beats the suburbs in many ways but trick or treating in an apartment building just feels WRONG WRONG WRONG.

5) Toddlers like to get candy and eat it on the spot. "Waiting till later" is a concept they will understand shortly after the Theory of Relativity.

6) Embrace stickiness. Try not to gag when your kid reaches her chocolate saliva covered hand into someone else's candy bowl. And try your best to understand how confusing it is to have a Tootsie Roll stuck in your teeth for the first time.

7) There is no gentle way to yank a lollipop from a toddler's hand.

8) Sometimes you have to quit worrying "what the adults think" and reach your hand into the candy bowl to grab a Twix for YOURSELF.

9) Do not dress your child up as Elmo unless they are comfortable with the attention that comes from pop idol status. Note: Mazzy would like to apologize to the baby at the Children's Library Halloween party. What must have seemed like a relentless attack was merely a prolonged show of affection.

9a) Dressing up a child as Elmo may seem like a great idea, but be prepared to explain the Elmo carcass in the days following. (Thank you to Farrah from The Three Under for submitting the picture below.)

10) Once your child knows about candy, there is no going back.

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Upload your Halloween photos to the Mommy Shorts Facebook Fanpage. I'm giving out awards for Best Costumes on Friday.

Happy Halloween! It's Your One and Only Excuse to Set Elmo on Fire

Today is Halloween. A Monday, as we are all aware. Which means that if you're a parent, this is most likely your third consecutive day of celebrating. If you're me, this also means your kid has been wearing the same outfit for the past three days.

I suppose I could have made/bought more than one costume but that just seems ridiculous. Particularly since Mazzy's costume is SO DAMN CUTE.

She's Corduroy, for those of you with less than stellar powers of Halloween costume deduction. That's her at the Bowery Babes Halloween party at the Children's Museum of the Arts yesterday.

If you are still in the dark as to the origin of Mazzy's costume, Corduroy is a classic children's book about a bear with a missing button on his overalls (pictured left). It has been one of Mazzy's favorite books for quite some time.

Wondering who crafted this adorable costume? 

HINT: NOT ME. I can't even sew a button on a shirt.

Remember last week when I said there are four kinds of MOM on Halloween? I lied. There are five. Please add "the faux crafter" to the list.

The key to the "faux crafter" is ETSY.

Cheap-Ass-Last-Minute-No-Effort Baby Costumes

Earlier this week I made a simple request on the Mommy Shorts Facebook Fanpage: "Whose got an infant and a camera?" Forty people responded and then about half emailed me for further instruction. Approximately half of those people actually followed through.

The assignment?

Photograph your baby in the cheapest dumbest easiest Halloween costumes possible. Use props around your house and do as many as you like. 

Examples: Drape a kermit frog over your baby and call her Lady Gaga. Stick a black pipe cleaner above your baby's lip and call him Salvatore Dali. Prop your baby next to a tool box and some wainscoting and call him Ty Pennington.

You get the idea?

Here's what you guys came up with:

Don't Crush The Dinosaurs

Think growing up in 2011 is hard? This little girl is here to tell us that growing up in the prehistoric age is much much worse.

 

Note: It looks like she may have filmed this video entirely herself. Imagine finding this on your camera by surprise? Almost makes parenting totally worth it.

The Importance of Pumpkin Selection

When I was a kid, pumpkin patches consisted of two things:

1) PUMPKINS

2) A PATCH

These days they are filled with hay rides, corn mazes, petting zoos, ponies and bouncy castles. (Or is that just the ones in New York?)

Which means not only is pumpkin selection important, but order of pumpkin selection events are important too. For example, you should NOT select your pumpkins before partaking in all the other activities unless you want to carry around two or three massive pumpkins while also making sure your child doesn't fall off a pony, eat food meant for a goat or get kicked in the head in a bouncy castle. (Can you guess who made that idiotic mistake last weekend?)

Plus, Mazzy continues to subscribe to the theory that BIGGER IS BETTER. The perfect pumpkin is the one that needs a separate car to drive it home.

Mazzy loved it all, of course. Particularly the pony rides. Check her out below— doesn't she look like a pro?

Did I mention I had my camera in tow? I continue to carry the thing even though I am just as likely to get a picture of Brad Pitt making out with my mother as I am to getting a picture of Mazzy smiling at camera.

So what do I do when I've got a whole lot of pictures of the back of my child's head? I make a comic strip.

Which brings me to the third installment of 'Lil Maz...

Past installments include Lil Maz: Zoo Detective and Resistance is Futile, Charlie.

"Dear Beyonce" Hits the Big Time

My "Dear Beyonce" post was syndicated on BlogHer today. For those of you who aren't bloggers, that is a pretty high honor. Please go visit and leave a comment so I'm not lonely over there!

If you are visiting from Blogher please check out the Best of Mommy Shorts. If you like what you read, join my fanpage. But don't be surprised if I start making odd requests for pictures of your children. That's what we do here.

10 Ways to Stop the Whining

Mazzy has a new game. It's called "Annoy the Crap Out Of Mom Until She Hands Over The iPad Or Buys Me An Ice Cream Cone". She's incredibly good at it. Although, my husband says it's not the kind of skill I should put on her preschool applications. If that's the case, I need the behavior to end.

Which brings me to the return of Dr. B.

Remember our early childhood development specialist? She's here to STOP THE WHINING with some very serious advice. Let's hope it works.

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Young children use whining in the same way that infants use crying – to communicate that they want something and they want it NOW!  When children start speaking, we often expect them to use their language to communicate appropriately but talking and communicating are two different skills which typically do not develop at the same rate.

Dear Beyonce

You might think this is another one of my judgmental rants in the same vein as my letters to Katie Holmes, Mariah Carey and Rachel Zoe. Quite the contrary. This is all admiration and real estate envy.

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Dear Beyonce,

I just read reports that you are building a 2200 square foot nursery for your as yet unborn baby. Let me be the first to congratulate you on this unbelieveably fabulous parenting choice! You have always been a trailblazer in music, dance and fashion so I guess it should come as no surprise that you will be a trailblazer in the cutthroat world of CELEBRITY PARENTHOOD PREPAREDNESS as well.

First of all, I think it is beyond cool that you bucked the current trend of trying to out-do each other in dollar amounts. While Rachel Zoe brags about Skyler's $70,000 closet and Mariah Carey waxes on about Monroe and Morrocan's $200,000 nursery, you made the trendsetting decision to talk square footage! Goddamnit woman— even at 4(?) months pregnant, you are cutting edge.

There's No Space Mountain in Chattanooga

You know how you imagine the day you tell your kids you're taking them to Disney World? The weeping with excitement, the showering of kisses, the official presentation of "The Best Parents Ever" award?

Yeah. Well sometimes that wonderfully generous offering will be met with a tearful plea to visit the town of Chattanooga.

 

The Chattanooga kids really need to take a lesson from Lily. Not only is Lily going to have the vacation of a lifetime but she's probably raking in enough money to visit Tomorrowland 100X over with the ad dollars from her 4,800,000 hits on YouTube.

 

What Does Your Kid's Halloween Costume Say About You?

As I thought about what to dress Mazzy in for Halloween this year (up top is last year's sushi), I realized that when it comes to costume creation, there are four distinct kinds of MOM. Do all these moms love their kids equally? Probably. Will all the kids love their costumes equally? Probably not.

The 4 Kinds of MOM on Halloween

1) THE CRAFTY MOM

Motto: "Love is Measured Through the Number of Sewing Needles that Snapped In Half During the Creation of My Child's Costume."

You started thinking of ideas for Halloween costumes on November 1st of 2010. You own a sewing machine, fabric scissors and sheets of felt in at least 50 different colors. In fact, you have an entire room dedicated to your craft projects. A room that has been photographed and featured on Design Sponge. And you're hoping that this year's costume makes the pages of Martha Stewart Living. You'll submit it as soon as the tips of your fingers stop bleeding.

2) THE CLEVER MOM

Motto: "My Baby is Nothing if Not A Canvas for Comedic Fodder."

Your costume doesn't have to make your kid look cute or be particularly well-made. The main objective is to make people laugh. You may have even given birth to a baby for the sole purpose of using him/her to express your ironic sense of humor. While other mothers curate keepsake boxes full of heirlooms and hair clippings, you have a box full of photos with which to use to embarrass your child on their wedding day.

Clockwise from left: Nacho Libre, a Biggest Loser contestant, Tom Cruise in Risky Business, Donald Trump.

Clockwise from left: Sarah Palin, Alien baby, Colonel Sanders, Borat