Things from a child’s perspective that will crack you up:

1. NUDITY
I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved.  She was stark naked!  As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, ‘Mom, that lady isn’t wearing a seat belt!’

2. OPINIONS
On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother.  The note read, ‘The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents.’

3. KETCHUP
A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar.  During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone.  ’Mommy  can’t come to the phone to talk to you right now.  She’s hitting the bottle.’

4. MORE NUDITY
A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women’s locker room.  When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover.  The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, ‘What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a little boy before?’

5. POLICE # 1
While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old.  Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, ‘Are you a cop?’
‘Yes,’ I answered and continued writing the report.
‘My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police.  Is that right?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I told her.
‘Well, then,’ she said as she extended her foot toward me, ‘would you please tie my shoe?’

6. POLICE # 2
It was the end of  the day when I parked my police van in front of the station.  As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy staring in at me.   ’Is that a dog you got back there?’ he asked.
‘It sure is,’ I replied.
Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van.  Finally he said, ‘What’d he do?’

7. ELDERLY
While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds.  She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs.  One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass.  As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, ‘The tooth fairy will never believe this!’

8. DRESS-UP
A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When  she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, ‘Daddy, you shouldn’t wear that suit.’
‘And why not, darling?’
‘You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning. ‘

9. DEATH
While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin.  Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased.

The minister’s son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always said:  ’Glory be unto the Faaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he goooes.’ (I want this line used at my funeral!)

10. SCHOOL
A little girl had just  finished her first week of school;  ‘I’m just wasting my time,’ she said to her mother.  ’I can’t read, I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk!’

11. BIBLE
A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages.  Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible.  He picked up the object and looked at it.  What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages.
‘Mama, look what I found,’ the boy called out.
‘What have you got there, dear?’
With astonishment in the young boy’s voice, he answered, ‘I think it’s Adam’s underwear!’

Before my son came into my life, I used to take a long whirlpool bath full of lightly scented bubbles while playing my favorite CD loud enough to drown out the sound of my own singing at least once a week That was the best stress buster I have ever found! After 4 years of being a Mommy, one night I decided I needed to do just that. Please God I prayed, at least one more time before my son turns eighteen and hopefully goes away to college!

My husband graciously agreed to take my son out to play in the snow for one hour. So I raced upstairs and turned on the bath water. My tub is a double size and it takes 50 gallons of water to fill it. After about 10 gallons, the steaming hot water turned ice cold. That never happened before! But I was determined, so I sat on the floor with my back propped up against the tub and waited for the hot water heater to give me more hot water. Every 10 minutes I tried again, and every ten minutes I got another few gallons of lukewarm water.

Forty  minutes or more had passed and a friend dropped by for a visit. Thank God it was good news, but my tub water story doesn’t seem to deter her from staying a little longer. It took all the graciousness I had in my entire being not to push her out the door. Finally she left and just as I was about to retreat upstairs, my husband came home with my son. My hour, or his, I’m not sure who’s, was up! I hurriedly told him my story and ran up stairs to the bathroom.

I turned on the music, lit the candles, poured in the lightly scented bubble bath, climbed in the tub of barely lukewarm water, laid down, turned on the whirlpool jets and started singing and who should appear? You guessed it, my son. I think, thank you God, because just the other day he decided he doesn’t like to take baths anymore!

First my son asked me, “What are you doing Mommy?“ so I explained. He was satisfied for the moment and started  singing and dancing to my music. Finally he got bored and left the bathroom. Ahhh… I thought, I really am going to enjoy my bath after all. When I emerge I will feel fully relaxed and completely stress free. I can’t wait!

Approximately five minutes later, just when I was starting to get a hint of what feeling relaxed and stress free was like, I hear, “I want to take the bath too Mommy!”  I opened my eyes to see my naked son standing beside the tub looking as if I said no, he would surely die. Pop! My bubble burst!

I lifted him into the tub and he scrunched down in the water and walked like a duck all around me in the tub yakking away a mile a minute. Then he proceeded to shake his naked, bubble soaked bottom right in my face! Every little inch of him and his innocence was just so… cute, he sparked that special rush of Mommy love within me and all my stress just floated away

Elaine K Stephen
Inspirational Gift Gallery
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Inspirational Christian Stories, Poems, Gifts Blog
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Tammy has sent another sweet story from her life as a mom. You can visit Tammy’s Coastal Vacations business here.

Here is another story straight from the mouth of my brilliant 3 year old son Robert. I was tucking him in bed, we said our prayers and I began to leave the room. I heard his soft voice coming from under the covers,”Mommy, If Jesus lives in heaven how can he fit in our hearts?” Stunned I thought for a few seconds and said “we just have to believe.” He came back quickly with a response. “Well Mommy,” I believe in you.”
I softly spoke,
“Good Night, Little one. I love you”. He smiled, and said “I know you do.”

(*This is something I wrote about back in the fall of 2004 when I had children ages 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 12. I thought some of you might appreciate the horror of ending up in this situation.)

(for those of you who don’t recognize it, that’s a title from an old U2 song)

Well, today was my first day to teach the 3 and 4 year old preschool class at church. “Are you nuts?” you may be asking. Well, mainly I’m just a wimpy optimist. Y’see, a few weeks back the lady at church who is in charge of nursery mandated that all mothers with nursery age kiddos would be needed to take a turn on nursery/preschool class duty. The nursery was understaffed and this was her solution, despite my suggestions to:

-try to get more workers to work fewer times a year

-pay someone to always work in nursery and not worry about rounding up workers any more (I even offered to pay for it myself, yet this idea was shot down as fast as it might have been if I had proposed hiring pedophiles to run the nursery….)

So, I never did agree to work in the nursery. I am with my kids all day long every day, and I look forward to church all week long. I do not wish to give up this important time in order to go stay in a cramped room with my own kids and a bunch of other ones and try to “teach a class.”

So you might be able to imagine my SHOCK and HORROR when one day there was a meeting for nursery workers and while walking past the table with all the meeting papers on it, I saw that I HAD BEEN ADDED TO THE SCHEDULE WITHOUT MY CONSENT!!!!! To work ONCE A MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Do you hear the blood curdling screams???)

I was SO flabbergasted (I love that word!) and dumbfounded that I just stumbled home with a copy of the schedule, incredulous. I had been drafted. Against my will. By a woman in my church.

At first my husband and I were so shocked and aggravated that we spent most of that Sunday afternoon with ours mouths kind of hanging half open and a dazed look in our eyes. From there we went to the “Hell no! We won’t go!” perspective, but of course this would require one of us to go deal with The Nursery Lady and tell her.

There was so much wrong with the scenario that it was hard to know where to begin. Mothers who drag their kids to church should not have to work in the nursery. People who would like to bless the parents of little ones and are gifted at taking care of them should work in the nursery. Frazzled moms need their church time, not an opportunity to get pushed over the edge by a smelly small room full of rowdy, crying, cookie-demanding, pushing, kicking, whining, tattle-taling children! But, hey, tough luck gals! Now get yer rears in gear and report for duty! (Left, left, left-right-left…..)

Well, I meant to talk to this lady about this that night and didn’t end up getting to go. Then I meant to talk to her about it on Wednesday night, and also didn’t end up getting to go. Then the next week we had new friends visiting our church and Nursery Lady came up to me and gave me a new schedule, saying with annoyance in her voice, “I had to go and redo the whole thing, so here’s a new schedule.” Well, as it turned out, other people with more backbone than me had already gone to her and said NO WAY to her plan. (Apparently I was not the only drafted mommy!) I didn’t feel comfortable getting into the issues with her while I had visitors sitting right there (didn’t want to scare them off!!) so let it slide……

As I continued to think about it I decided that yes I want to help out at church. (We have only been going there since May so I don’t have any other thing I do there yet) Also, the teenage girl I got assigned to be my helper is someone I have felt like I wanted to get to know better and reach out to. Seeing her assigned to me was actually the one good thing about all of this. What I have really had a heart for at this church is to reach out to the girls in the youth group. So, I thought that maybe this was a way God was going to work it out for me to build a relationship there and see what the needs are and what ways I might be able to get involved. So, I decided to just grin and bear it and see how it went.

So today was D-Day….. There was no curriculum to follow, nothing prepared for crafts or activities….. And let me tell you, although I have children in this age group, and although I have homeschooled, and although I love my children very much, this kind of thing is NOT MY AREA OF GIFTEDNESS. I can’t even accomplish (and I do not enjoy!) crafts at home with 2 kids sitting at the table. Why would I be able to do it with 6 or 7 or more kids most of whom I don’t even know???

Our church services are usually over 2 hours long. So, if you divide that up into 5 minute attention span slots, you can imagine that it takes some quick thinking and fancy footwork to keep it all together. Somehow I managed it, mainly with a lot of humor for my own benefit. The worst behaved kids were my own. (too bad I couldn’t send them off to their parents!) Always a big plus there……

They’re a tough crowd to play to, too:

ME: Hey kids! Want to sing some songs?!

KIDS: (just look at me with big eyes and a little drool coming out of their mouths)

ME: OK! Who knows a song?
(silence)

ME: OK! How about Jesus Loves Me! Jesus loves me this I know…. Come on kids! Sing! For the Bible tells me so…

KIDS: (still just looking at me, except with less drool and more of a look like, IS SHE NUTS?! What is she talking about? Sing? What do you mean, sing?? I have never heard of this before..)

ME: OK! Well, I guess you don’t want to sing that. Um, ok, how about the ABC song? Surely you know that one. Right?! A B C D E F G

KIDS: (continued silence. Even my own kids refused to join in, even though at home they sing with me all the time)

ME: Ok then, no singing right now.

KID 1: I want a cookie!

OTHER KIDS: Yeah, I want a cookie too. And a drink.

And on and on it went. “I want a cookie.” (I had made healthy banana bread for the snack because I was going to be Ideal Teacher and not ply them full of cookies and candy like other teachers do. Yeah, well, they loved the bread and chowed it all down and then continued to beg for cookies, so by the last 20 minutes I was passing out cookies left and right just to keep them off my case….. So much for ideal!)

“I need to go potty.” (You know that one is contagious. Once one has to go, they all do. Even ones that aren’t potty trained will suddenly have a mad desire to get in line and sit on the pot…..)

“He took my toy.”

“He’s not being nice.”

“He hit me.”

Lord in heaven, have MERCY ON ME!!!! Calgon, take me AWAY!!!!!!

Well, you’ll be glad (and relieved, I’m sure) to know that now all the 3 and 4 year olds at my church know that God Made The Animals (the only thing I could think of to “teach” them), and they have a pasted and colored-on piece of paper to prove it. Good thing I was there, or they might have missed that important lesson. (Taking my bows now. Thank you. Thank you…..)

NAPTIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to one of our readers for sharing this cute potty training story.

We potty trained our sweet (and
short) 23 month old son. We potty trained him the “normal” way. You set him
down on the potty, and let him go. Daddy is so helpful though! Imagine my
surprise at walking into the bathroom to find my very short little boy standing
at the toilet (too short!) and peeing. Whoops! I think even the neighbors
heard me yell, “Who taught the baby to pee standing up?!?!?!”

Daddy thought it was great fun though! He had to learn sometime! (Although
when he was taller would have been good.) It’s been a month though, and while
he has mastered getting on a step stool FIRST, he hasn’t figured out how to lift
his shirt up and then pee. We won’t talk about aim…….

Going back to my chant, “at least he’s potty trained… at least he’s potty
trained… at least he’s potty trained…)

You had that Fisher Price Doctor ’s Kit with a stethoscope that actually worked.

You owned a bicycle with a banana seat and a plastic basket with flowers on it.

You learned to skate with actual skates (not roller blades) that had metal wheels

You thought Gopher from Love Boat was cute (admit it!)

You had nightmares after watching Fantasy Island .

You had rubber boots for rainy days and Moon boots for snowy days.

You owned a “Slip-n-Slide,” on which you injured yourself on a sprinkler head more than once.

You owned “Klick-Klacks” and smacked yourself in the face more than once.

You had either a “bowl cut” or “pixie,” not to mention the “Dorothy Hamill”. People sometimes thought you were a boy.

Your Holly Hobbie sleeping bag was your most prized possession.

You wore a poncho, gauchos, and knickers.

You begged Santa for the electronic game, Simon.

You had the Donnie and Marie dolls with those pink and purple satiny shredded outfits.

You spent hours in your backyard on your metal swing set with the trapeze. The swing set tipped over at least once.

You had homemade ribbon barrettes in every imaginable color. (yep! complete with beads and dangly-things too!)

You had a pair of Doctor Scholl’s sandals (the ones with hard sole & the buckle).

You wanted to be Laura Ingals Wilder really bad; you wore that Little House on the Prairie-inspired plaid, ruffle shirt with the high neck
in at least one school picture; and you despised Nellie Olson!

You wanted your first kiss to be at a roller rink.!

Your hairstyle was described as having “wings” or “feathers” and you kept it “pretty” with the comb you kept in your back pocket.
~~When you walked, the “wings” flapped up and down, looked like you were gonna “take off.”

You know who Strawberry Shortcake is, as well as her friends, Blueberry Muffin and Huckleberry Pie.

You carried a Muppets lunch box to school and it was metal, not plastic. With the thermos inside!

You and your girlfriends would fight over which of the Dukes of Hazzard was your boyfriend.

YOU had Star Wars action figures, too!

It was a big event in your household each year when the “Wizard of Oz” would come on TV. Your mom would break out the popcorn and sleeping bags!

You often asked your Magic-8 ball the question: “Who will I marry. Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, or David Cassidy..?”

You completely wore out your Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Fame soundtrack record album.

You tried to do lots of arts and crafts, like yarn and Popsicle-stick God’s eyes, decoupage, or those weird potholders made on a
plastic loom.

You made Shrinky-Dinks and put iron-on kittens on your t-shirts! (yep!)

You used to tape record songs off the radio by holding your portable tape player up to the speaker.

You had subscriptions to Dynamite and Tiger Beat.

You learned everything you needed to know about girl issues from Judy Blume books (Are you there God, It’s me, Margaret.)

You thought Olivia Newton John’s song “Physical” was about aerobics.

You wore friendship pins on your tennis shoes, or shoelaces with heart or rainbow designs.

You wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer.

You drowned yourself in Love’s Baby Soft - which was the first “real” perfume you ever owned .. . (Actually, it was “Love’s Rain Scent,” and Bath & Body Works’ “Cotton Breeze” smells JUST LIKE IT!!)

You glopped your lips in Strawberry Roll-on lip gloss till it almost dripped off.

A friend sent me this funny little tidbit today and I thought I’d share it here:

Students in an advanced Biology class were taking their mid-term exam. The last question was: “Name seven advantages of “Mother’s Milk.” Worth 70 points or none at all. One student, who had partied late the night before, was frustrated to think of seven advantages. He wrote:

1. It is perfect formula for the child.
2. It provides immunity against several diseases.
3. It is always at the right temperature.
4. It is inexpensive.
5. It bonds the child to mother, and vice versa.
6. It is always available as needed.

And then, the student was stuck. Finally, in desperation, just
before the bell rang, indicating the end of the test, he wrote:

7. It comes in such cute containers.

He got an “A”.