The best advice for the mother of the groom? Keep your mouth shut and wear beige! "It's bad enough when two mothers plan an event as fraught as a wedding, but what happens when the ex-husband's new girlfriend elbows her way in? Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige adds the mother of the groom to literature's rich collection of long-suffering women. When Seidel's heroine refuses to suffer in silence, the results are both poignant and hilarious." ---Debra Galant, author of Rattled and Fear and Yoga in New Jersey Darcy Van Aiken is doing just fine, thank you. She's an ICU nurse with an "amicable" divorce from her ex-husband, Mike, two great kids, and a prescription for Ritalin. Then her older son, Jeremy, gets engaged to Cami Zander-Brown---daughter of a wealthy New York family---and her world gets turned upside down. The source of her trouble, much to Darcy's surprise, is not in the form of Rose Zander-Brown, Cami's elegant and accomplished mother. Nor is it in the form of Guy Zander-Brown, Cami's charismatic and wildly successful literary agent father. Instead, lurking in the shadows of Mike's new life is the beautifully dressed Claudia, a self-described "managed perfectionist." The Zander-Browns have money. Lots of money. The plans for their daughter's dream wedding grow more fabulous by the day, and loving every minute is Claudia. With her perfect taste, Claudia can't help thinking she would make a much better mother of the groom than Darcy. This wedding is her chance to entrench herself in Mike's life---and take credit for the two sons Darcy has worked so hard to raise right. It's a battle of will and wits. What Darcy learns about herself---and about family and friendship---makes for a delicious, hilarious, touching read.

A young crocodile swallows everything from a can of baby powder to his father's hat until the day he helps his mother tidy up the house with the vacuum cleaner.

A humorous look at how fathers can survive the wedding of a daughter. Describes all the wild and crazy things people (mostly brides and mothers of the bride) do leading up to a wedding.

George Catlin discusses how closing one's mouth during sleep and day to day will foster improvement in mental and physical condition. This edition contains all of the original illustrations the author made. Walking among and studying various Native American tribes in the 19th century, the author noticed that many of the elders possessed a serene and well-preserved appearance. The young members of the tribe seemed especially healthy, with an innate resistance to certain illnesses and congenital conditions. Seeing the tribe's members sleeping, he noted that they all did so with closed mouths. Catlin pondered whether this habit contributed to the physical vigor of the people, and investigated further. After venturing back to the towns of the Midwest, he attests to witnessing how terrible many people who had practiced mouth breathing throughout life appeared, and became deeply opposed to its practice. This book details how children and young people can be encouraged against mouth breathing, and notes how different the facial countenance appears between mouth breathing people and nose breathers. Today, the notion that mouth breathing promotes physical ugliness or decrepitude is wholly disavowed as an eccentric idea with no basis in fact. However, sleep researchers have demonstrated that breathing with the mouth open while asleep can result in more snoring and thus a lower quality of sleep and therefore health. Overall, one could venture that Catlin's ideas possess a certain merit, even if his book is an exaggeration. Although primarily known today as a painter and traveller who became an emissary of sorts to the Plains tribes, George Catlin was also an enthusiastic if occasional writer. He admired the Native American peoples for their traditions and distinctive appearance, and took to painting them - his marked talent led to their respect for his gifts, and they duly welcomed him with friendship.

Teaching with Your Mouth Shut is not intended as a manual for teachers; it aims to provoke reflection on the many ways teaching can be organized.

Are you struggling to connect with your child now that they've left the nest? Are you feeling the tension and heartache as your relationship dynamic begins to change? In Doing Life with Your Adult Children, bestselling author and parenting expert Jim Burns provides practical advice and hopeful encouragement for navigating this tough yet rewarding transition. If you've raised a child, you know that parenting doesn't stop when they turn eighteen. In many ways, your relationship gets even more complicated--your heart and your head are as involved as ever, but you can feel things shifting, whether your child lives under your roof or rarely stays in contact. Doing Life with Your Adult Children helps you navigate this rich and challenging season of parenting. Speaking from his own personal and professional experience, Burns offers practical answers to the most common questions he's received over the years, including: My child's choices are breaking my heart--where did I go wrong? Is it OK to give advice to my grown child? What's the difference between enabling and helping? What boundaries should I have if my child moves back home? What do I do when my child doesn't seem to be maturing into adulthood? How do I relate to my grown child's significant other? What does it mean to have healthy financial boundaries? How can I support my grown children when I don't support their values? Including positive principles on bringing kids back to faith, ideas on how to leave a legacy as a grandparent, and encouragement for every changing season, Doing Life with Your Adult Children is a unique book on your changing role in a calling that never ends.