humor

If You Have a Rabbit

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Photo of a white rabbit with brown spots around its eyes and nose on a hardwood floor; text: If You Have a Rabbit

If you give a mouse a place to live (not on purpose), you may not be able to catch them.

If you have a mouse that you cannot catch, then they may try to hide under the dishwasher.

If they hide under the dishwasher, you may try to set a trap there to catch them.

If you set a trap there to catch them, you will have to pull out the dishwasher to check on the trap.

If you have the dishwasher pulled out to check on the trap, your rabbit may try to go under the dishwasher.

If your rabbit goes under the dishwasher, they will definitely chew on the cords under the dishwasher and get nearly electrocuted. (And get you nearly electrocuted trying to get them out.)

If your rabbit chews on the cords, you will need to call an appliance repair person.

So that’s why we’re still waiting on the dishwasher repair person to get in a part.

What Valentine’s Day is Like as a Parent

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Photo: Sunrise with trees in the foreground; Text: What Valentine's Day is Like as a Parent

Valentine’s Day as a parent is…

– Watching your kindergartener with pride as he fills out his Valentines by himself
– Buying drugstore candy because you don’t have time to get anything else and know your spouse will like it better than the fancy stuff anyway
– Arguing with a two-year-old in the middle of the night about changing his mysteriously wet pajamas

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10 Funny Truths About Parenting

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

“Your shirt is not a mechanism for storing snacks,” I said to my two-year-old after he tried to shove food down his shirt. Better than throwing it, I suppose, but not exactly what we were going for.

There are a lot of funny moments in parenting, but very few of them are substantial stories worthy of a blog post. For at least some of them, I’ve made them into memes that I share on the blog’s Facebook page. As I’ve never shared them here, I thought it would be fun to gather a number of them together in one place.

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How to Handle the 5 Stages of Annoying Child Behavior

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Handle the Five Stages of Annoying Child Behavior (Photo: White woman with her head in her hand)

“O kookamonga flakes, o kookamonga flakes, how lovely are your branches!” sang my older son, to the tune of O Christmas Tree. Over and over again. On and off for more than two hours.

Near the end, my hand was twitching. I never, ever wanted to hear those words again. It wasn’t bad behavior – just deeply, deeply annoying.

But the next time he sang it, that feeling started to fade.

Having mothered through a great deal of annoying behavior – and certainly facing much more in the future – I’ve realized parents’ reactions to this behavior proceed through five stages. They’re much like the stages of grief, but hopefully funnier. Whether your kid is a nose-picker, whiner, or a constant singer like mine, knowing these stages might help you work through them a little faster.

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The Bond Between Brothers

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

The Bond Between Brothers. Watching my children together illustrates the sibling relationship for me in a way that I didn't have as an only child. (Photo: A one-year-old and four-year-old looking at a packed dirt road.)

“Siblings are who you share your childhood with,” my husband commented, as we talked about possibly having another kid.

“I never thought about it that way,” I responded. Tilting my head, you could practically see the classic cartoon lightbulb above it. As an only child, that aspect of having a sibling honestly never occurred to me. But now, years later, I see its truth reflected in the relationship between my two young children. Even at one and four-years-old, they have a bond different than I’ve ever experienced.

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Storytime with Hop and Bun, the Imaginary Bunnies

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments
Photo: Stuffed white rabbit sitting on a bookshelf. Text:

This is actually Snowball, our “pet bunny.” But good luck getting a photo of an imaginary friend.

“Tell me a Hop and Bun story,” Sprout says, his pants around his ankles as he’s sitting on the toilet. Perched on the side of the bathtub, I look off into the distance, as if I can pluck an idea from the mirror above the sink. “Hmmmm, well,” I stall, wracking my brain. “Once upon a time, there were two bunnies, named Hop and Bun. They were best friends. One day…”

Eventually, I always come up with something. The plots have ranged from the hapless bunnies getting lost on the subway to saving up money and buying a scooter.

While I love telling Sprout stories – despite the odd circumstances – that’s not my favorite part of this routine. No – it’s the fact that Hop and Bun are utterly from Sprout’s imagination. I played no part in their creation. They aren’t drawn from a book or TV show. One day, Sprout just declared that he was a bunny named Hop and Bun was his friend.

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10 Ways a “Simple Afternoon” Can Go Awry

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

10-ways-a-simple-afternoon-can-go-awry

The afternoon stretched before me, ripe with potential. With Chris taking the car in for repairs, I had the kids to myself on a warm, sunny day. The park nearby beckoned. The seeds for our garden still needed starting, months before they could go in the ground. And we still had the make-your-own bird feeder activity I had promised Sprout that we would do since we got birdseed in church for some mysterious reason. Why not do it all? None of it would take very long, right? Silly me.

Here’s a few of the ways an afternoon filled with old-fashioned activities can go not-quite-as-planned:

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Unexpected Skills I’ve Learned As a Parent

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

unexpected-skills-ive-learned-as-a-parent

Changing diapers, chasing after toddlers, tolerating loud nonsensical singing from the never-ending musical from hell – all expertise one can expect to pick up as a parent. But there’s a specific subset of skills that my pre-child mind would have never dreamed up until I needed to do them. Here’s some of the things I’ve learned how to do in my three years as a mom that I would have never predicted:

Be okay with handling my breasts in public and exposing my nipples in front of my parents

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