How babysitters could increase their revenues 100x

So for the past few mornings I've been trying to introduce my toddler to a new game called "The Night-Night Game". I haven't worked out all the details but so far it just involves mommy curling up under a blanket on the couch and closing her eyes. I've tried to pitch this in the most exciting way possible ("Sit at your desk and draw a picture of what mommy's dreaming about!!") but it has not been the hit I'd hoped it would be.

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Speaking of sleep deprivation, a.k.a. THE STORY OF MY LIFE, I have a brilliant idea for how babysitters could get rich. Ruthless 12-year-old girls, listen up.

Get a mailing list of people who have had babies within the past year. Call their houses around 6:30am on a weekday and offer to come take care of their children while they sleep in.

I came up with this little stroke of genius yesterday morning after a bad night with the baby. After my morning ritual of thanking God that it is not possible to die from lack of sleep, I was trying to see if I could think of anything I wouldn't give to be able to go back to bed for a few hours. I didn't come up with much.

Had a babysitter called like I recommend above she could have named pretty much any hourly rate and I would have accepted (especially if she caught me while I was still warm in my bed). If she cheerfully offered to get both kids up and dressed and fed and take good care of them until sometime around lunch for a mere $500 per hour, my only response would have been to croak into the pillow, "Do you take Visa?"

Pocket full of shells

I was driving around this morning and happened to hear Rage Against the Machine's Bulls on Parade, a lovely little ditty from the '90s in which Zack de la Rocha screams into a microphone to the point of distortion over the same guitar chords they use for every other song.

As a teenager, I loved this song. I was very "hard" and angry at the world and this song encapsulated my suburban teen angst. I'd seen Rage in concert, joined in the mosh pit (remember those?) and was feeling pretty tough when the song came on at a party one time. It was a new song at that point and I was going to impress my fellow world-weary teens with the fact that I already knew the lyrics.

The microphone explodes, shattering the molds
Either drop tha hits like de la O or get tha f--k off tha commode
Wit tha sure shot, sure ta make tha bodies drop

Aw, yeah, that was so my life dude! And then I put on my best scowl for the chorus:

Rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells!
They rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells!
They rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells!

[I should note that I couldn't catch all of what de la Rocha was saying so I lip synched something like, Eraharahrahrahrah!! With a pocket full of SHELLS!]

So, not knowing myself well enough to know that I really need to quit while I'm ahead if I ever start looking cool, I got in a discussion with another Rage fan and he said something about the gauge of the shotgun shells de la Rocha was talking about. In the minute it took for me figure out what he'd said, the confused look on my face belied the fact that I was picturing shells as in sea shells.

The entertainment for the rest of the evening was everyone laughing their asses off that I was picturing the Rage singer screaming in angst about having a pocket full of little sand dollars and starfish.

And in that moment, my dreams of being the baddest middle-class white chick on my suburban block were shattered.

Interpreting babies' sounds

Word on the suburban street is that there was this amazing woman on Oprah yesterday named Priscilla Dunstan who claims to be able to interpret the noises babies make to understand what they're saying. Evidently it was really compelling. Everyone's talking about it. She claims that:

• Neh="I'm hungry"
• Owh="I'm sleepy"
• Heh="I'm experiencing discomfort"
• Eair="I have lower gas"
• Eh="I need to burp"
  

I tried to watch the accompanying video but it's shut down do to high demand, and her website is also slow because of all the traffic. I imagine Dunstan sitting in her house right now Googling "does the Ferrari 575M have LATCH system?"

She shouldn't be the only one to get rich off of interpreting what babies say. I am also a "baby whisperer" of sorts, being able to interpret the little noises my four-month-old makes:

• Kheeh = "I see it's almost eleven o'clock and you're still in your pajamas. Really, mother, don't you have some sort of website about not doing that sort of thing?"
• Ghah Ooog = "That twenty-dollar bill great-grandpa gave you for my college savings account -- would that be the same one I saw you pull out at Target yesterday?"
• Nang Heeeh = "Remember that time you'd accidentally turned off the monitor and didn't hear me crying for five minutes? I'll be sending the psychotherapy bills to you."
• Gooh Gooh = "Just wanted to note that it is now approaching the thirty minute mark that I have been sitting in my bouncy chair while you chase after my big brother. I feel certain that the other babies from playgroup do not have to endure this sort of duress."
• Neeg = "I heard what you said under your breath when I woke up for the third time last night. Plan on that being my first word."
  

Maybe this'll be my next Three Month Project, launching aNeuroticMomInterprets YourBabysSounds.com. It'll be huge.

Anyone ever consider that Einstein had nothing like Baby Einstein toys?

Sweet, I have a new blog. Let the unsolicited opinions start flowing!

So in the process of getting feedback on SuburbanCEO.com one subject that came up a lot was the obsession our society has with kids being smart. Of course people have always wanted their kids to be intelligent, but good manners, religious values, etc. were equally if not more highly prized. But these days it seems to be the sole fixation of parents that their child be smart: every toy must be educational; hot brands have names like Baby Einstein, Baby Genius, Little Smarties, Little Laureate, etc.; every toy that plays music must have some Mozart in there on the off chance it increases kids' IQ's by a quarter point; parents of teenagers act like low SAT scores are punishable by death. I could go on.

This has been one of my biggest surprises upon entering the world of parenthood. Other parents are unbelievably competitive about their kids' intelligence. I just can't hang. When I was a more inexperienced mother I naively told a funny story at a playgroup about some clever thing my son had said. Rather than the amused chuckles I expected, the response I got was more like, "OH YEAH? MY SON DERIVED DE BROGLIE'S EQUATION WITH A CRAYON WHILE EATING THE ORGANIC BROCCOLI SOUFFLE I MADE HIM FOR LUNCH!"

And my kids aren't even school-aged! I've heard it's even worse once they're getting actual grades that empirically prove their vast mental capacities (I can hear it now: "Our son Caden graduated magna cum laude from the astrophysics department of his preschool.")

Of course my blase attitude about this could come back to haunt me. I just buy my kids regular old blocks and cars and stuff like that to play with -- but who knows, maybe a life of educational toy deprivation is going to make them totally dumb. I promise to rescind all the statements above if 16 years from now if my son sends a letter home from college that begins, "Deer Mome".

Welcome to the Suburban CEO blog...

I think that this blog is going to be a great source of inspiration to other mothers. They will quickly see that if a procrastinating, inept, lazy mom like myself can take charge and find fulfillment at home with kids, anyone can.