Has rapidly risen to the top of the “Books that improve my quality of life” list.

Recently, Gavin read the Eric Carle classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, at school. Upon finishing it, his 3-year old brain made the causal connection between eating lots of food and turning into, as he so eloquently puts it, “a big, fat caterpillar.” Since then, he has morphed into something resembling the Weight Watchers police… for his father.

I think the problem actually stems from Gavin and my Ex having similar food preferences. Fruit snacks, waffles, and string cheese have become major sources of contention in our home. (If you really want to see a preschooler get mad, watch him wake up to discover his father has eaten all the Scooby Doo fruit snacks the night before. It isn’t pretty.)

Now, Gavin monitors his father’s food consumption like a 3-foot tall hawk. Whenever he thinks his father is eating too much of a single item (thus increasing said item’s chances of not being available when Gavin wants it), he informs him, “Daddy, you shouldn’t eat so much food, or else you will turn into a big, fat caterpillar.” My Ex doesn’t find it very funny. I, on the other hand, am still giggling about it as I write this post.

Admittedly, I don’t help the situation. I egg Gavin on and ensure this saying sticks, often prompting him with, “Hey, what happens if Daddy eats a lot?” to which Gavin, practically on autopilot says matter-of-factly, “Big, fat caterpillar.”

Thank you, Eric Carle.

People are f-ing crazy.

A 33-year old American woman named Nadya Suleman just had a set of octuplets, bringing her total number of children to fourteen. Fourteen! Holy hell. And, the oldest of the children is seven. She has fourteen children under the age of eight.

Just reading this story online yesterday made me want to lie down and take a nap. How does one parent fourteen small children? Suleman is not married and is on welfare - all fourteen of her children were conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF). While I am all for women raising children on their own if they so desire, I think it is highly irresponsible to purposely impregnate oneself that frequently. And, to rub salt into this wound, the woman receives public assistance. Tax payers are supporting Suleman’s little hobby. Suleman’s mother explains that her daughter is “obsessed with children.”

So unbelievably irresponsible. No one knows how Suleman was able to convince a doctor to implant eight embryos at once, especially in a woman under 35 with six other children. The father of all fourteen kids is reportedly a neighbor of Suleman’s who had donated his sperm. However, this neighbor recently married, according to the Telegraph, and asked Suleman to stop using his sperm to conceive children. Clearly, she did not comply with his wishes.

I hope someone examines Suleman’s mental health and evaluates her ability to care for that many kids. So sad.

I am so sick of people peeing all over my house. (And no, we’re not talking about my Ex being drunk.)

My soon-to-be three year old does this Jekyll and Hyde act. At school, he parades around in a dry diaper all day, politely using the potty whenever the urge strikes him. His teachers insist he is potty-trained and want to move him up to the next classroom where the kids no longer where diapers.

I refuse. Why, you ask? Well, once home, Mr. Potty Trained turns into a peeing machine. We put him in underwear - he peed right through them. We put him in pull-ups training pants - he adjusted himself such that he was able to pee outside the training pants without actually wetting himself. While very resourceful, he did wind up wetting my couch.

We make the potty available to him. We encourage him to use the potty instead of diapers / pull-ups / underwear. I’ve even bribed the kid with ice cream. (In my defense, my Ex bribed him with a pet goldfish.) Nothing.

Does anyone out there have any potty-training tips for me? I am getting really, really tired of waking up to the sound of “Uh-oh, Mommy. I peed on my bed.”