Betina's Mother's Day Brunch

Happy Mother's Day!

I sincerely hope you're all out there enjoying the flush of spring and reveling in the joys and accomplishments of motherhood. . . whether yours or somebody else's. But in case you're at the computer, I thought we could take a break for a bit of Sunday Brunch and a few chuckles from those wonderful folks in India. . . whose web site collected the following goodies!

Enjoy!


"Mother's Dictionary of Meanings:

Amnesia: Condition that enables a woman who has gone through labor to make love again.

Dumbwaiter: One who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.

Feedback: The inevitable result when the baby doesn't appreciate the strained carrots.

Full Name: What you call your child when you're mad at him.

Grandparents: The people who think your children are wonderful even though they're sure you're not raising them right.

Hearsay: What toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.

Ow: First word uttered by children with older siblings.

Independent: How we want our children to be for as long as they do everything we say.

Impregnable: a woman who remembers her last labor.

Puddle: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.

Show Off: A child who is more talented than yours.

Sterilize: What you do to your first baby's pacifier by boiling it, and to your last baby's pacifier by blowing on it and wiping it with saliva.

Top Bunk: Where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.

Two-Minute Warning: When the baby's face turns red and she begins to make those familiar-grunting noises.

Whodunit: None of the kids that live in your house.



The most frequent maternal admonitions. . . all around the world:

• Make sure to change your underwear always; you never know when you'll have an accident.
• Don't make that face or it'll solidify in that position.
• Be careful or else you'll put your eye out.
• What if everyone jumped into a well? Would you do it, too?
• You have enough filth behind those ears to grow potatoes!
• C'mon close that door! Were you born in a barn?
• If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.
• Don't put that thing in your mouth; you don't know where it's been!

Things Mom Would Never Say

• "How on earth can you see the TV sitting so far back?"
• "Yeah, I used to skip school a lot, too"
• "Just leave all the lights on ... it makes the house look more cheery"
• "Let me smell that shirt -- Yeah, it's good for another week"
• "Go ahead and keep that stray dog, honey. I'll be glad to feed and walk him every day"
• "Well, if Rahul's mamma says it's OK, that's good enough for me."
• "The curfew is just a general time to shoot for. It's not like I'm running a prison around here."
• "I don't have a tissue with me ... just use your sleeve"
• "Don't bother wearing a jacket - the wind-chill is bound to improve." "

As my own mother used to say, "You're never finished being a mother."
Witness:
One early morning, a lady went in to wake up her son. "Wake up, son. It's time to go to school!"
Son: "But why Mom? I don't want to go."
Mom: "Give me two reasons why you don't want to go."
Son: "Well, the kids hate me for one, and the teachers hate me, too!"
Mom: "Oh, that's no reason to not to go to school. Come on now and get ready."
Son: "Give me two reasons why I should go to school."
Mom: "Well, for one, you're 52 years old. And for another, you're the Principal!"

And now for some Wise Words on Motherhood:

All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.
- - - - Robertson Davies

If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
- - - - Bette Davis

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
- - - - Honore' de Balzac

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
- - - - George Eliot

Men are what their mothers made them.
- - - - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.
- - - - Nancy Friday

Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
- - - - Erich Fromm

The love of a parent for a child is the love that should grow towards separation.
- - - - Kahlil Gibran

You may have tangible wealth untold:
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be
I had a Mother who read to me.
- - - - Strickland Gillilan

Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall;
a mother's secret hope outlives them all.
- - - - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.
- - - - Carl Jung

For a woman, a son offers the best chance to know the mysterious male existence.
- - - - Carole Klein

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
- - - - Ogden Nash

Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them.
- - - - Rita Rudner

It’s sad that children cannot know their parents when they were younger; when they were loving, courting, and being nice to one another. By the time children are old enough to observe, the romance has all too often faded or gone underground.
- - - - Virginia Satir

Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.
- - - - Sophocles

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of priests.
- - - - Spanish Proverb

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.
- - - - Benjamin Spock

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.
- - - - Gloria Steinem

Making the decision to have a child-it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
- - - - Elizabeth Stone

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
- - - - William Makepeace Thackery

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
- - - - Mark Twain

Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.
- - - - Peter Ustinov

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see -- or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
- - - - Alice Walker

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.
- - - - John W Whitehead

So, what about YOUR mom? What was her favorite saying when you were growing up? What was the funniest piece of advice she ever gave you? What is your favorite memory of your mom?