To prove we don’t have some sort of gender bias with the IPBOTW awards, this week’s honor goes to someone who (presumably) has a Y chromosome, Dorky Dad. He won with this post about my two favorite things, butts and Chinese food:

Every now and then these days I’m reminded exactly why it’s a good idea to avoid doing certain things with The Wife while an impressionable young boy is nearby. This weekend was one of them. We went to a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and The Boy as usual carpeted the floor with a layer of noodles.

As I cleaned up top, The Wife got down on her knees and picked some up off the floor. At that moment, The Boy began rubbing her butt.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

The Boy answered, but without controlling his volume. I might add that the restaurant was packed. “I’M RUBBING YOUR BUTT!!”

Read the rest, then remember to check back later when Dorky Dad will face off against the other August winners for the coveted Imperfect Parent Blogger of the Month Major Award™.

This week’s Imperfect Parent Blogger of the Week award goes to Brigette Russell over at Moralia. We strayed from the seemingly recent pattern of picking “ha ha” posts and went with the other direction we like to take here at The Imperfect Parent — looking at social issues and insight to the various choices we have to make as parents. Brigette won for this post, about how — like formula feeding mothers — there seems to be a stigma to c-section delivery, despite the reasons for having one.

We hear repeatedly from natural childbirth advocates that birth should be a natural rather than a medical event, that doctors and hospitals cover themselves against insurance risks by performing excessive and intrusive procedures that make surgical deliveries more likely, and so forth. We hear the laments of women who took their natural childbirth classes, did their breathing exercises, and went to the hopsital with a detailed written “birth plan” that called for no drugs, no IV, no fetal monitoring, delivery by a midwife rather than a doctor, lots of walking around and calming music, delivering in a squatting rather than prone position, maybe even in a bathtub, and hubby there all the while with video camera in hand to capture the magic moment when mom brought forth new life through her own valiant labor, a creative force of nature rather than a patient surrendering her maternal power to medical practitioners — only to have things go terribly wrong and end up drugged and catheterized on an operating table as doctors sliced open their bellies and removed their babies, robbing them of the earth mother fantasy that had been playing itself out in their heads for months.

Read the whole thing. Also, while you’re here, remember voting is open to determine July’s Imperfect Blogger of the Month — you can vote every day until midnight this Sunday.

Oops, we almost ended the week without announcing who is receiving the coveted Imperfect Parent Blogger of the Week award, and I’m sure you all were hitting refresh every ten seconds in anxious anticipation, no? Well the wait is over, and this week’s winner is BlabberMouse! We really enjoy her sense of humor, and the post that drove her past the finish line was this one, featuring an eerily familiar multiple choice question:

The facts:

(A) Larry is home on summer vacation.

(B) Gus is home with strep throat.

If (B) is true, then that makes

(A) False
(B) Larry a bitter man
(C) The house a disaster area
(D) All of the above

Read the rest to find out the answer.

Stay tuned, because at the end of next week BabbleMouse will go up against the other July winners in a voting smackdown to see who will take home the enigmatic Blogger of the Month Major Award™.

This week’s Imperfect Parent Blogger of the Week award goes to Jen on the Edge — congrats! Jennifer received this prestigious award for this post, about the secret life of American Girl dolls. Having two boys, I can’t even relate to the doll scene she stumbled onto (although my youngest has started carrying around a Hannah Montana “action figure” everywhere), and I was still laughing my ass off. Be sure to keep an eye out for a special appearance by Duct Tape Doll.

Jen also gets extra points for helping to save the planet. And of course, she’ll face the other July winners at the end of this month to see who will take home the mysterious Major Award™. If you have someone you would like to see considered for Blogger of the Week, nominate them here.

This week’s Imperfect Blogger award goes to… (why do I continue every week with the damn ellipses trying to build up some faux suspense, you already saw it in the title) … The New Girl! We discovered her blog awhile ago via her friend Kristen — which means for those of you paying attention, that might warrant some sort of charge of nepotism. Well, I *am* from Chicago, after all, where “we don’t want nobody nobody sent.” But in this case, unlike the Daley clan, she got here solely based on talent.

The post that launched her into the winner’s circle was a recent one on proper form when receiving good news and giving bad news:

What is not okay, as far as I’m concerned, is PARADE RAINING. It is not acceptable to receive someone’s good news with a quick, ‘Yeah, but have you thought of this?’ or, ‘I’m not so sure that’s what I would do.’ or, ‘Is that all they offered you?’ You know what I’m trying to say. There’s a MILLION ways to Rain on Someone’s Parade. None of them are friendly. Or good.

If you’re still not convinced, think of it this way: Parade Raining is for grouchy old people. Who have no teeth. And no sex.

Just saying.

If you haven’t been following, The New Girl will go head-to-head with the other winners in July for one of our afore-not-revealed “Major Awards”, rumored to be worth hundreds of rupees. Speaking of which, there’s still time to vote for June’s winner — you can vote every day until Friday.