The Power of Advertising

If you ever wonder who they write all those commercials with catchy songs and funny premises for...it's me. I am their target audience. After seeing the commercials for this and this, I have been fighting the urge to go out and BUY! Lately I find old commercial songs popping into my head at certain times. For example, whenever I make the kids chicken noodle soup now, I sing:

When I want chicken noodle
Mom makes Lipton Chicken Noodle
It's the only chicken noodle
That'll do

'Cuz Lipton chicken noodle
Is delicious chicken noodle
And there's lots of little noodles
That you chew

Thanks Mom for chicken noodle
Thanks for Lipton Chicken Noodle
It's the only chicken noodle
That'll do!

In the original commercial, I vaguely remember a kid in a chicken suit (on stage as though he was in a school play) walking around with his wings flapping, so of course I have to add this to the act. It's most entertaining for my kids.

Then yesterday, after Kes had a wipeout on the concrete, hubby mentioned that she might need some Ozonol on her knee. I then broke into this:

How about a little squeeze?
You've had a little fall
You've scraped your elbow or your knee
That's the time for a little squeeze
Of Ozonol

And just randomly popping into my head came this 1980s Canadian anti-smoking tune. It was rather mournful and to the point:

I never did a thing
That made a smaller person
Lose the way
My freedom won't allow it
My freedom...
Won't allow it

That one is quite obscure and I could not even find it on a Google search. Anyway, it's funny how having kids makes you wax nostalgic and recall the weirdest things from your youth.

We've been hosting a Japanese exchange student this week at our home. We had expected them around 8pm on Saturday and there was a huge mixup with the times and they ended up arriving at 10:30am. We didn't get the call until around 3:00pm as we were out shopping for groceries in preparation. Fortunately we are only five minutes from the school and got there quickly, but these poor kids had been waiting there all day! Some of the host families are in Surrey! I felt so bad for the three or four we left behind. And then they had to be back at the school at 7:45 the next morning for a day trip to Victoria, poor kids! Her name is Mina (meena) and she will be with us until Sunday and although she is relatively quiet and unobtrusive, I am finding one more person in the house to be overwhelming. The great part is that even though we were led to believe that she would have no English, hers is quite good. As good fortune would have it, English is her passion and she works very hard at it. Naturally she came bearing lots of gifts that only come packaged the way the Japanese do it. Everything was gift-wrapped neatly. There was a tin of rice crackers in a variety of flavours, a wooden "catch the ball" toy for the kids, as well as a couple of story books that Mina laboriously translated for us into English (how very sweet!) along with a little setup of the storybook characters in beanbag form (I'll try and snap a photo of that), a jar of cherry blossoms packed in salt that you make into a tea (peculiar, but not bad), and a little box of confections individually wrapped in rice paper - they are shaped like little bells and are like eating a sugar cube - yum!

So now you know why I have been a little quiet these last few days.

Hayden has turned into a mina bird and repeats most things you say to him. He is learning more shapes now, so along with DIE (star) and MOO (moon), he now has KIRKLE (circle) , OVOVO (oval) and GOGOGO (triangle). If I ever need to distract him, as I did this morning while we signed some insurance papers, I pop in A Treasure in My Garden and he stands there enthralled - this is by far the best purchase I have EVER made. The songs are sweet, short and not the kind that drive you batty after hearing them 10,000 times.

The other thing he really likes is Hi5. I ADORE this program! Not only are the songs catchy and short, but the show contains none of the typical preachiness that you find in so many of today's cartoons and kids shows. I mean, I know we have to make kids aware about the environment and social issues early on, but please. We are talking about year and a half old kids. They want colours, they want music, they was flash, they want entertainment. They are not going to understand the nuances of saving the rainforest ditties. Don't they get enough of that forcefed to them in school anyway? How many times has my teenaged daughter had to go out and pick up other people's garbage, cigarette butts and dirty diapers in the community? More times than I like to count. And don't we have city services (and pay taxes) for that stuff?

Okay, somewhere along the way that turned into an unintentional rant! Sorry about that!

The movers have been booked and are arriving on April 27th to do the packing. I am sick with excitement, mostly because I don't have to do it! Sure, I'll pack a few things so I know where they are, like my makeup. But for the most part, I'll enjoy that present-like atmosphere of opening boxes on the other end, not knowing exactly what is in them!