One Minute Wackiness

Want to add a little fun to your family's life? Here are some super quick ways to give life a little touch of zaniness.

• On a day where you all plan to stay home, have everybody put together the most outlandish outfit they can find and wear it all day. Pair pink striped pants with orange flowers and add sneakers and a tiara, that sort of thing. Mom too! Don't forget to take pictures.
  
  
• Feed the goblins. Start a tradition where a bite of somebody's food mysteriously disappears before meals. Warn the kids beforehand that the news reported there were some hungry goblins (or fairies or porcupines or whoever you like) out on the prowl. They're harmless but they steal food! Now every once in a while sneak a bite out of one of the kid's cupcakes or sandwiches. You can even take a quick bite out of a hamburger when dining at a fast food place and watch your surprised child open his goblin-bit burger!
  
  
• Occasionally pick random times to jump out and (playfully) scare your kids from around corners and in strange hiding places.
  
  
• Have a grumpy hat. Find a really silly hat and announce that it will be rotated onto the heads of whoever says grumpy remarks (parents too!).
  
  
• Leave awful, silly jokes in their lunch boxes.
  
  
• Serve only food of one color for a day or a meal. Tint it with natural food coloring like beet juice, blueberries or cumin. You could also serve one meal in theme colors like flag colors every day for a week. Breakfast could be pancakes with strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream for red, white and blue, for example.
  
  
• Serve food in fun containers. Who says you have to drink out of glasses? Give kids a choice of measuring cups, bowls, or flower vases to drink out of, for example.
  
  
• Let kids record your answering machine message. Unless you're really, really important there's no real reason why it'll hurt to have a six year-old being silly on your machine. It might even make the bill collectors nicer. It could happen!
  
  
• Randomly shout out nonsense. I find it makes life great fun with little ones if you are prone to suddenly shrieking "Oh no, there's a monkey on my head!" and then checking and going "Phew, guess not..." and resuming your TV watching.

Well, that's all that springs to my weird little brain at the moment. Hope you found at least something to add to your own repertoire of oddness. And now, there's a little one intently playing with my teeth so I really gotta go.


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All works on this site Alicia Bayer unless otherwise noted.
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