Erma Bombeck
Let us hope manufacturers can come up with a diaper that is environmentally sound. To go back to cloth would send us back to the day when breathing and raising a baby at the same time were incompatible.Collection: Baby
It is difficult to single out one sport over another, but if I have to name one in my separation suit, it will undoubtedly be football.Collection: Sports
Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.Collection: Children
Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.Collection: Religious
Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it's still snowing.Collection: Mom
Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.Collection: Inspirational
He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn't afraid to go into the basement by himself. He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around to the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures... but he was never in them.Collection: Daughter
Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children.Collection: Children
If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.Collection: Pregnancy
Cats invented self-esteem.Collection: Self Esteem
He who laughs.....lasts.Collection: Inspirational
A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.Collection: Growing Up
Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.Collection: Sunset
A member of the committee slapped a name tag over my left bosom. "What shall we name the other one?" I smiled. She was not amused.Collection: Funny
Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.Collection: Mother
When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.Collection: Naps
I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.Collection: Running
One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.Collection: Husband
Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden.Collection: Women
When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they're not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They're upset because they've gone from supervisor of a child's life to a spectator. It's like being the vice president of the United States.Collection: Mother
The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.Collection: Family
As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.Collection: Creativity
I became hysterical and frightened and begged for sedation. And that was just the first prenatal visit.Collection: Firsts
When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty "just adding water." Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better.Collection: Self
Having a delivery covered by Medicare just isn't going to fly. It's too risky for a woman to put a baby down and not remember where she left it.Collection: Baby
We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.Collection: Taken
My mother phones daily to ask, "Did you just try to reach me?" When I reply no, she adds, "So, if you're not too busy, call me while I'm still alive," . . . and hangs up.Collection: Mother
I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.Collection: Children
Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.Collection: Christmas
I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.Collection: Mother
Explain to me how he [her son] can ride a bicycle, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim and race for eight hours ... and has to be driven to the garbage can.Collection: Running
All of a sudden, I feel very old and very tired. Maybe when I get to California, the smog, brush fires, floods, and earthquakes will cheer me up.Collection: Funny
It is upsetting to many parents that their teen-agers introduce them to their friends as encyclopedia salesmen who are just passing through ... if they introduce them at all. I have some acquaintances who hover in dark parking lots, enter church separately and crouch in furnace rooms so their teen-agers will not be accused of having parents.Collection: Dark
Grandma told me Mama was once caught by the Principal for writing in the front of her book, "In Case of Fire, Throw This in First." I have never had so much respect for Mama as the day I heard this.Collection: Funny
There are few things in this world more satisfying than having your son teach you how to play tennis, unless it is having a semi-truck run over your foot.Collection: Running
the ultimate in longevity is the Christmas fruitcake. It is a cake made during the holidays with fruits that make it heavier than the stove it is cooked in.Collection: Holiday
The fact was I didn't want to look my age, but I didn't want to act the age I wanted to look either. I also wanted to grow old enough to understand that sentence.Collection: Age
There is only one thing harder in this world than forgiving. It's to ask forgiveness armed only with, 'I'm sorry'.Collection: Sorry
If anyone knew where they were, I'd send the ISDBB (Incredibly Stupid and Dumb Beyond Belief) award to the two guys who tried to break in to the Ohio penitentiary.Collection: Funny
It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.Collection: Kids
When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.Collection: Travel
It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.Collection: Jobs
For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.Collection: Husband
For the first two years of a child's life, we spend every waking hour tryibg to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process.Collection: Funny
I am always behind the shopper at the grocery store who has stitched her coupons in the lining of her coat and wants to talk about a 'strong' chicken she bought two weeks ago. The register tape also runs out just before her sub-total. In the public restroom, I always stand behind the teen-ager who is changing into her band uniform for a parade and doesn't emerge until she has combed the tassels on her boots, shaved her legs, and recovered her contact lens from the commode.Collection: Running
Once you see the drivers in Indonesia you understand why religion plays such a part in their lives.Collection: Travel
The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.Collection: Funny
People usually survive their illnesses, but the paper work eventually does them in. Filing a claim for insurance is terminal.Collection: Funny
What makes people laugh? . . . It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.Collection: Laughter