How not to play an April Fools’ Day joke on your kids

With a Mommy-made quilt this awesome, you wouldn't want
to share either, especially at 4 a.m.

April Fools’ Day is a fun tradition for a lot of families as parents trick their kids, play funny jokes and get a few laughs. But if it’s not done right, it has the propensity to make a fool out of the foolers. We learned that the hard way this April Fools’ Day, bright and early. Strike that, it was too early to be bright.

So you don’t make our same mistake, I’m passing on our valuable experience along with an easy-to-follow list of steps not to take  when coming up with an April Fools’ Day joke.

1. Don’t come up with a joke while about to fall asleep

Things seem funnier when you’re tired. Also, when laying in bed, you tend to only be able to think of sleep. So as my wife and I were discussing what kind of jokes we could pull on the children, they all seemed to involve beds.

When do my kids need speech therapy? AKA I'm going to give my kids speech disorders

I know, I know. I've read the literature that says you should be diligent in correcting children's mispronunciations. If you don't, researchers say that it can develop into a lifelong problem. Sometimes I don't like researchers.

Why? Because I sometimes like my children's speech to rub off on me and not the other way around. Take my two-year-old daughter for example. For some reason she can't pronounce the pairing "OL." Instead it comes out more like the pairing "ER." This leads to some adorable mispronunciations.

Who wouldn't want to "herd" this little girl,
especially when she asks so sweetly?

For instance, with her arms outstretched and a hopeful look in her eye, she'll say, "Will you herd me?" This is almost always at the top of the stairs when she doesn't feel like navigating the stairs with her own short little legs. Heaven knows she's fallen down them often enough. So I’ll indulgently pick her up, usually answering, “I’d love to herd you!”

It's even endearing enough to get me to lug bulky inanimate objects around for her.

BEEP BEEP BEEP Apparent Parent is busy parenting and can't come to the Web right now

Sometimes you just get too busy parenting to write about parenting.

The cute gummy smile of our two-month old.
He's our fourth child and helps make sure
Mommy and Daddy don't get any alone time.
Totally worth it.

This pretty well explains my life for the last - let me check - seven months without posting a single thing to the blog. Since I've written we've added a fourth child to our family, and I'll be darned if that little kid's not a handful. Not to mention cute little No. 3. She continues to be our mischief maker. She'll even admit it sometimes: "What are you doing?" we'll call out to her.

"I making mischief. It's OK, I put it back." She's two years old with the mind of a convict. In fact, that's one of her nicknames, among many others.