More than ever before, family time faces stiff competition from other activities that appeal to kids:  video games, text messaging, and checking in on friends through mySpace or Facebook.  Family Fun Night offers the antidote:  Tips and advice for establishing a weekly family time, as well as dozens of specific ideas for spending quality time together.  This comprehensive book suggests ways to interest teens (let each one invite a friend or allow them to play their music in the background on game night), to contend with a large age range (form teams or play games of chance rather than skill), and to manage competitiveness among siblings (play cooperative games or ones where players change teams throughout).  From clever twists on timeless classics to brand new games your family will love, this book offers something for every family, during every month of the year.  Interested in family-friendly card games?  Suggestions for outdoor family games?  Or ideas for last-minute game nights or for game nights that cost less than $10?  It’s all covered in this comprehensive, reader-friendly guide, along with ideas for snacks and meals that complement each family night theme.  Whether family members use the book to brainstorm ideas for their own unique night or follow each game night to the last detail, they will find that family playtime creates wonderful memories that will last forever....

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She's hilarious. She's also wise and full of empathy. And she helps new mothers maintain the one thing they can't survive without-a sense of humor. Cynthia Copeland, a mother of three (and author of Really Important Stuff My Kids Have Taught Me, with 325,000 copies in print), knows the real poop-figuratively and literally-on being a new mother, and she has the wit, skill, and generosity to share it.

Illustrated throughout with the author's wonderful cartoons, THE DIAPER DIARIES chronicles the first year of motherhood, from the hospital stay (nominees for the world's worst labor coach anyone?) to baby's first birthday and contemplating the unimaginable-having another. There are lists, quizzes, timelines, charts, and real-life stories. Birth announcement faux pas. Names and nicknames and what they really mean. Pacifier tales. A guide to Nana-speak. How a 4-mile car trip can take 2 hours. Why it's impossible to get to work without finding spit-up or rice cereal somewhere on your clothing. Ten reasons to be happy you're up at 3:15 a.m.

And, with Mr. Phrenology-like illustrations, a section on the new mother's brain before and after baby, featuring: The Travel Section (Then: How to flirt your way into first class. Now: How to sweet talk your jogging stroller onto the plane), The Television Section (Then: How to tell Carrie from Samantha from Miranda from Charlotte. Now: How to tell Laa-Laa from Po from Dipsy from Tinky Winky), and The Sex Section (Then: Exact location of G-spot. Now: ________)....

With 354,000 copies in print, Really Important Stuff My Kids Have Taught Me is the really successful book of sandbox wisdom. Now it is reissued with three fresh, appealing covers.

Collected and edited by Cynthia L. Copeland, author of The Diaper Diaries and Fun on the Run, together with 170,000 copies in print, Really Important Stuff is filled with clear-eyed common sense that can make us start with surprise and delight. Here are children saying things that are smart, funny, innocent, completely sensible in a way adults just aren’t. Things like: “Bees shouldn’t be so nice and fuzzy.” “You can either keep pedaling, get off the bike, or fall over.” “Pants with pockets are better.” Things like: “It’s more fun to color outside the lines.” “Lick your ice-cream cone before it gets a chance to melt.” “You’re only little until someone littler comes along.” And, “Milk tastes better through a straw.”...