Erma Bombeck Quotes

If God had meant men to have children, he would have given them a PVC apron.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.

I visited those friends who'd just had a baby, and she was washing dishes and he was cleaning the house, and I burst with happiness. And in their minds, they were in this terrible domestic rut.

It wasn't so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it's just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

In this achievement-based lifestyle, most of us have certain boxes we're checking to make us useful humans. But a lot of things you do as a parent are kinda invisible. There's a lot you achieve - just getting dinner on the table - that are more than making a song.

I'll never get sick of raising my children, but other people might get sick of them.

Life is too short to waste time changing the sheets every week. Especially when you have small children who tend to wait until you change the sheets to then wet the sheets.

I have a four-and-a-half-year-old and, when she was two and a half, she would make my wife and I do voices, like Woody and Jessie the Cowgirl, or Elmo, or Yogi Bear and Booboo. If we didn't do it, she would scream at us. So, my wife and I would have adult conversations as Yogi Bear and Booboo. It was just a nightmare year.

Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.

I got so much food spit back in my face when my kids were small, I put windshield wipers on my glasses.

I was able to draw a lot from my own childhood, my friends' childhoods as well and my daughters' friends who are like my children as well. They multiply all the time. So you can have everything and say I can get all this done and then late at night one of your kids have a freak out about school or an assignment you end up staying up til 3 in morning helping them through it. Or somebody gets sick or has a crisis.

There are no secrets at our house. We tell the kids, 'Mom and Dad are going off to kiss.' They go, 'Eww, gross!' But we demand it.

I'm a mother of three children, and we do make mistakes.

Maybe we ought to look at a guy's response to our microwave from now on." Aunt Annie said. Really." Mom said. "The narcissist looks at his reflection in it. The OCD guy thinks you don't keep it clean enough.The antisocial--" Puts his fist through it because it reminds him of his father." Annie said. She'd read all of mom's books, too. And the paranoid one would be jealous of the amount of time you spend cooking." Mom said Were you using that microwave again? Is something going on between the two of you? I caught you looking right at its clock." Annie said.

It's weird people think my kids will be in therapy because of their names. Guys, my kids will be therapy for LOTS of reasons, I'm sure.

I have a twenty-month-old baby, a sixteen-year-old boy - same maturity level.

Where's your instruction manual?" I asked him. "What's the baby customer-service number?

My dad has never actually grounded me. He always tells my mom to do it. He tells her, "Miley was so bad today, you need to ground her.

Most people in the world have seen more of me on-screen than my kids have.

Usually the triumph of my day is, you know, everybody making it to the potty

When you have three teenagers, it gives a whole new meaning to "homeland security."

Parenting is a constant struggle between making your kids life better and ruining your own.

We have scarcely gotten home ... when our children's sneezes greet us, skinned knees bleed after waiting all day to do so. There is the bellyache and the burned-out basement bulb, the stalled car and the incontinent cat. The windows frost, the toilets sweat, the body of our spouse is one cold shoulder and the darkness of our bedroom is soon full of the fallen shadows of our failures.

My kids hear me behind my door, giggling like an idiot, and they roll their eyes at the blatant indignity of it all.