Phew, at least it's not the Wine Flu. I'd hate to give up Chenin Blanc.

Right now I feel like the only mom who hasn't yet quarantined my children, invested in gas masks, and run around in a circle in public shouting SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU! AHHHHHH!

The last time I remember feeling this way was in 2001 when the Anthrax thing struck and New York was in a similar crazy panic. I sat over a bottle of wine with a friend, drunk and nervous and punchy, creating our own versions of Anthrax. Like Cranthrax, which would get rid of urinary tract infections; Imanthrax which would turn you into a size 0; Klanthrax which could only be found in Mississippi and CSpanthrax which was a great anecdote for insomnia.

It got us through the week.

I have to believe in my heart of hearts that the media fascination with this is far greater than the actual risk of death. Not to take away from the tragedy of the child in Texas who died after contracting swine flu, but only now it's revealed that he had "underlying health problems." Only now, after 24 hours of frantic tweets and emails and blog posts about plastic bubbles and installing Purell dispensers on your children's foreheads.

The Daily News reports that their favorite journalism source, "officials," are reporting that parents should prepare for massive school closings--even though in the very next sentence, Governor Patterson essentially said the opposite.

And while the World Health Organization director made the general statement "it really is all of humanity that is at threat under a pandemic," Faux News (surprise) repeats it as "the World Health Organization ratcheted up its pandemic alert, WARNING THAT ALL OF HUMANITY IS THREATENED."

Kind of different spin there, huh.

Susan Wagner's husband got a notice from work asking them to avoid "courtesy kisses" (although as she points out, should there really be so much kissing in the workplace?) and I'm just waiting for some wackadoodle mom at my preschool with too much time on her hands to start demanding some kind of decontamination showers at every entry and exit point.

So why aren't I panicked?

I guess I'm weird in that I get more worked up over the things that official sounding people deny can kill you (like oh, say BPA in bottles) than those that they're claiming actually can.

Or maybe it's just my authority issues: You tell me there's a problem and I'll challenge you to prove it. Tell me nothing to see here, move along, carry on...and I'm all over it. What are you hiding? Huh? Huh?

So thank you Karen Walrond for tweeting about the "Flu of the Aporkolypse" and thank you to The Onion for telling us what "Real Americans" think about the Swine Flu so I can laugh about this just a little bit.

And please tell me I'm not the only one who's not body dipping my kids in alcohol every 60 seconds. Because I'd hate to think that I'm the only crappy mom on the block. Again.

The lost songs

I have this theory that in everyone's life there is a collection of lost songs - those once beloved tunes turned cringe-worthy things of auditory and perhaps emotional pain.

Where at one time they were the songs that made you happy, made you dance, made you swoon, at some point the joy was heartlessly taken away from you by a two-timing boyfriend, a creepy American Idol contestant, or an infuriating commercial that twisted some inspired lyrics with the hopes that the greatest love song of the 80s might sell some burgers.

Every so often, I'll stumble across one of these songs and it jars the memories, and then I mourn the days that I loved the song before I hated it. A few that come to mind:

Melt With You - This is always the one I think of first. You blew it BK. And BK's ad agency. And whoever represented Modern English and sold out one of the greatest songs of all time for a few thousand dollars and some magic beans. I hope you bought some nice hair plugs with your earnings, you miscreants.

Ray Charles: Anthology - Man, I was addicted to this album. And then I had to go and fall head over heels with his number one fan and we listened to it every night and smooched on the couch to it until the day he told me that oh by the way he was going to drop out of civilization and become a bartender at Club Med starting now. I listened to Crying Time every day for a week and then threw it out.

Don't Stop Believin' - There was a time that this was my ring tone. And it wasn't all that long ago. Thanks, Sopranos, for making it everyone's ringtone. Hmph.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Wayne and Garth gave us schwing but took away Queen. I'm not sure that was a fair trade.

Total Eclipse of the Heart - I dated a guy in high school and for the full 10 days of our relationship this was Our Song. No idea why, really, because the video was actually kind of creepy. I've since reclaimed the song, but it was a bumpy ride there for a while for me and old Bonnie Tyler.

Kiss from a Rose - Death by overplaying. My bad entirely.

Sister Goldenhair - Frienemy got custody in our divorce agreement. These things happen.

Goodbye to You - Patty Smyth's hit with Scandal actually had fantastic kitsch value until a former ad agency boss suggested we use it in a car commercial to represent "rock n roll luxury." At that point I decided that it was cheese. And no, we didn't use it. (There is only one other person out there right now who knows what I'm talking about by the way. And if he's reading, he's laughing his ass off.)

We Got the Beat - Last night. Dancing with the Stars. Enough said.

(Okay, who am I kidding. I still love Don't Stop Believin'. I listened to it twice on You Tube while I wrote this post.)

So how about you? What's the backstory on your favorite lost song?

The Brodie Chronicles: Smithsonian Edition

I don't think I'm telling tales out of school to say that my 11 year-old nephew, Brodie, has not exactly had the most conventionally normal, happy, suburban, two-car garage, shiny Schwinn on the front lawn upbringing.

He's never known his father. And his mother is currently sowing some wild oats (again) 2279 miles away from him, which I can't get into with much more detail without getting really upset or really angry or writing something that will make her never talk to me again. I love her, but this is why I have big freaking problems with 16 year-olds having babies, and that's all I'll say about that.

Fortunately Brodie's also got about the most loving, committed extended family in the entire universe as we know it, so he's not only got a stable home right now, he has a wonderful uncle of the menfolk persuasion for that day in the very near future that he realizes he's got some weird hair growing under his arms.

Occasionally he also gets the Mom-101 Reverse Fresh Air Fund Treatment, by which we pluck a kid out of his very own big room in the suburbs for a summer, and force him to sleep on an air mattress on the floor of our Brooklyn apartment with the dog hair and the dust bunnies.

So when Hershey's invited me to Washington DC overnight for a blogger event to kick off the new Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian movie sweepstakes - and said that I could bring Brodie - I was like hell to the yeah. Let's say the keywords here were Airplane Ride, Air & Space Museum, Midnight Movie, Other Kids, and Free Chocolate.

(Not that I wouldn't love a special mommy-Thalia trip, but if a movie's not animated, it had better have a friendly talking spider in it that sounds just like Julia Roberts.)

The cast and crew of own private Smithsonian lock-in: Melissa, Ali, Victoria, Renee, Linda, Audrey, Colleen, Stephanie. Missing from the photo: Creepy monkey.

Once again, I am proud to say that I was able to return the nephew to his rightful owners without breaking him. In fact, I'm fairly certain he enjoyed himself.

And I did too. A lot. Not just because of holycowtheBESTsm'oresEVER so take that you inept Girl Scout leaders. (Ingredients: Graham crackers, Hershey's Milk Chocolate, marshmallows, cooking torch, low level PR associate forced to assemble them at 11:30 PM.) I learned a bunch about air and space and paper airplanes, and how great the movie crew was, and the fact that you actually have to exercise to get arms like Colleen, and on top of that I got to know a lot about the care and feeding and very strange inner workings of 11 year-old boys.

Lesson learned: It's more fun to make "bling rings" learned from this book and then lose them all over the museum than pay attention to the very nice aeronautics expert describing Lindberg's first flight.

Lesson learned: 11 year-olds loooove the corporate branding photo ops, unlike their cynical aunts.

Lesson learned: "The monkey" is the coolest part of the whole Air & Space Museum, the monkey being the actual (preserved) monkey (ack preserved monkey) that went into space (preserved monkey ew).


Lesson learned: If the nephew's shoe breaks, and the only store open on a Sunday morning only has one pair of shoes that kind of fit and they happen to have bottle openers built into the soles, just tell him they're um...hooks. For um, hanging the shoes. Somewhere. With a hook.

Lesson learned: The idea of making pen pals is still cool even if no one knows what this crazy "pen" thing is, of which we speak.


Lesson learned: Fake acrylic nails for little girls - oh I think I may just vomit up those 40 boxes of Whoppers right now. (This is not about 11 year old boys, I know, except for the fact that they might make me wish I had one in about 8 years.)

Oh and Hershey's? "Looking into" high fructose corn syrup alternatives for Hershey's syrup. I'll buy that.

Oh, and if you win the sweepstakes? You get to spend a whole night sleeping in the Air & Space Museum.

Yes, with the monkey.

Three letters

You know what's nice? Spending the weekend with your 11 year old nephew and seeing the world through his eyes.

I forgot how the idea of free slippers in an upscale hotel can be the single coolest thing in the world. Or as he put it to the bellman who showed us upstairs, "I can only think of three letters to describe this place: W.O.W."

You should have seen how he reacted to the concept of a minibar. A minibar with Oreos.

This is how you get a blogger to write about your brand

Hi Mom-101, we'd like to send you some flowers.

You would? Why? What's the catch? What do you want from me? Are you following me? Are you stalking me? You're stalking me aren't you. Should I be calling the FBI?

We're just recognizing different moms for Mother's Day and we wanted to recognize you.

Really? You're not going to like spam me for the rest of eternity asking for coverage on my blog right?

Nope. Just sending you flowers. And we'll write about you on our own blog.

Wow, that's kind of nice. I like that blog.

Our pleasure. You don't even have to write about it if you don't want.

Don't tell me what to do, you marketer! This is my blog! I will write about you if I damn well please!

Eh, reverse psychology. Gets me every time.

Seriously, thanks 1-800-FLOWERS for sending me these beautiful roses. No doubt they will end up spilled all over the floor some time real soon with our cats eating the baby's breath. And Thalia wants to thank you for the big pretty bow for her outhouse. That may have been the best part of all.


And Julie? Julie Mulligan? Seriously, you are a floral designing genius. I am totally stealing that flower gift idea for new moms.

One more way to get me to write about your brand - invite me down to DC for the weekend with The Brodester, let me hang out with a bunch of other bloggers I'm excited to meet (hi Linda!) and ply me with chocolate. Stay tuned.

---

By the way, if you are looking for Mother's Day gift ideas--besides flowers--the Cool Mom Picks Mother's Day Gift Guide is out. Whoo! We've got discount codes galore and more recession-friendly picks than ever.

Today, preschool. Tomorrow, Baywatch.

Thalia is learning about marine life in preschool this week all with perfectly preschool-appropriate activities: Reading a story about an octopus, painting a giant whale, making crab cakes. Blah blah blah.

So it made sense when she said that her classmates have all been playing "Jellyfish" this week and she wanted to play with her sister.

From the next room: Okay Sage it's your turn.

Now you are going to sting me.

Is it stinging? Ow, ow it stings!

Okay...now pee on me.

She has very thorough teachers I guess.

I like the Square Butt commercial and I cannot lie

The other day I was watching a very important PBS documentary. Okay, it was Real Housewives of NYC.

(After which Nate said, "We really need to talk about your TV habits because they're bad." )

(And then I realized that I'm not going to take TV-watching advice from the guy who still watches the Powerpuff Girls without irony.)

During the show, a commercial came on that had me shouting BRILLIANT! HILARIOUS! AWESOME! And evidently I am alone here.

If you haven't yet seen the Burger King commercial promoting a Spongebob Square Pants partnership (SpongeBob, Nate's other favorite show) take a look below. In a well-produced, over-the-top parody of the original Six Mix-a-Lot video, I Like Big Butts, this 21st century made-for-commercial TV remix features the lyrics, I Like Square Butts.





Reading the comments about it this week on blogs and message boards and email strings, I feel like the bad mom who's supposed to be outraged but isn't. I am supposed to be seeing how this commercial is single-handedly bringing down decade of feminist progress and is one teeny step away from inspiring the next generation of pole dancers. And yet instead, I find myself arguing, "What? It's a parody!" A parody of a silly 90s pop culture moment, aimed at parents, only running at night on adult shows.

Which makes sense. Because if Nate is any indication, mostly who wants all that plastic SpongeBob crap is guys like Nate.

And stoned college kids.

It's also pretty much right on brand for Spongebob which, if you've ever watched it, you know lives and dies on the butt joke.

Joanne Bamberger, who I lurve to death and am proud to call a fellow Momocrat, took the more popular parental point of view which she expressed eloquently in an editorial piece on NPR (NPR! Go Joanne!) One aspect of her piece is that she is surprised that moms who disliked the Motrin Mom campaign (ahem) could think this was funny.

I take some issue with the question because that implies that what the Motrin watchers lacked was a sense of humor and that now they've miraculously found it.

In fact, I think it was the Motrin commercial lacking the sense of humor.

Anyway.

What can I say, I like irreverence. I like seeing the guy get hit in the nuts with the soccer ball on America's Funniest Home Videos. I liked Madagascar 2, and I'm not sure how exactly Big and Chunky is so much more acceptable than the Burger King ad. And yeah, I guess I like seeing otherwise attractive women with phone books in their butts. (Although admittedly I could live without the "Booty is booty line at the end.")





I'm not stupid and I completely appreciate the notion that some see the ad combining a children's icon with "sex" and that's a dangerous place to go -- but I have to use "sex" in quotes because a parody of a ridiculous song to begin with isn't the same as having Giselle come out in a bustier and lick a Spongebob shaped ice pop for the camera.

Humor, to me, makes all the difference.

In other words, it's hard to say to your child, "Oh this video? That's just Fergie simulating felatio on a British palace guard." It's easy to say, "Oh this commercial? That's a joke because there was this silly video back long before you were born where all the people did this funny butt dance and everyone used to laugh about it and dance to it at parties."

At least that's what I said to my daughter. But then, I have it easy. She doesn't like SpongeBob. And she doesn't like burgers.

Thanks O.B., for providing hours of femininely hygienic fun.

A whole house full of toys and the kids like to play with the "tankons."

Weekend mother

After months of being a regular office grunt with a day job, I found myself with a few free days out of the office this week.

Today happened to coincide with my sitter's day off and the next thing you know, it's 10 and the kids aren't dressed yet and Sage hasn't eaten breakfast and the TV's been on pretty much forever. Then it's 11 and Sage is still refusing to eat, although Thalia tells me she's now ready for "her second breakfast" which is apparently a frozen waffle. Then it's noon and I realized that Thalia still had to eat lunch before getting to school at 12:20, and she's hungry but she's not and now Sage is hungry too but just wants Care Bear Snacks, whatever that means (thanks Nate).

Also I forgot the hair brushing.

I think it comes down to the fact that I am just not a great weekday mom.

You full time stay-at-home moms, you are my heroes. Because I cannot do it. Cannot. At times I wish I could, of course. I love the romantic notion of spending all day with my kids, planning nutritious meals, turning vaccuming into a fun family game, and creating a new macaroni necklace each day, or whatever the hell the 21st century version of that is. (Penne perhaps?) I can only imagine what it would be like to actually have clean floors and a sparkling bathtub and still have time to be that mom at school who plans the auctions and the fundraisers and knows exactly who is responsible for bringing the mylar balloons and who is bringing the latex ones.

I won't ever be that mom. I won't ever be that person. I can't even get my kids fed in time for school on a regular old sunny Thursday. (Which..shit. I think I'm supposed to be picking her up now.) I love my work and I believe it keeps me balanced. Even when I seem unbalanced because of it.

Sorry Thalia and Sage - at some point I know you'll wish I were "like the other moms."

And then one day you'll realize that instead, you got the mom who lets you watch the Wonderpets at 8PM because she feels guilty for working all day, once in a while gets you on TV or in a cool music video, allows way too many animals in the house because man you love them, and is willing to carry you the extra three blocks to Haagen-Dazs on the first warm spring weekend for double scoops of peanut butter and chocolate.

The weekend mom may not know a lot, but at least she knows that life's too short to eat crappy ice cream.

This headline is not optimized for SEO

I am a word nerd. This means I set my DVR for Will Shortz interviews, do wacky things like read 25 pages of the encyclopedia, and find myself physically pained by press releases that describe how "Mom's will just love our new patent-pending Baybee Onezees!!!"

Illegal use of Y! Illegal use of Z! Illegal use of apostrophe! Illegal use of exclamation point! Arghhhhhhh.

It means that I also entered the land of LOL/OMG/WTF internet parlance with great trepidation.

The other day bluesnyce on Twitter offered to introduce me to DW and all I could think was, Griffith? Weaning off the message boards has perhaps been the best thing for my writing since my memoir instructor at Gotham Writer's Workshop told me to describe the room after I walk into it.

(Also, I still hate friend as a verb. Just getting that off my chest.)

Then just now, I read a tweet from Jen Singer that articulates my word nerd fears exactly: SEO is killing the clever headline on the net.

I'm not some old fuddy duddy mourning the loss of shan't and shaking my fist in the air at the kids who say "like" six times in a sentence. I'm not furious that you can now write Fuck in Advertising Age and have it published, provided you're Bob Garfield. What I am sad about is the the demise of wit in the pursuit of Google traffic. It's been on my mind for a while.

Some of the greatest blog headlines that have stuck with me had nothing to do with SEO. In fact, they'd probably drive entirely the wrong search audience to the post.

Behold:

Placenta A Woman

Will No One Help the Hookers?

The Worst Post I've Ever Written

Spiritual Lipstick

I Am Archimedes! Behold My Junk!

Bathroom Mushroom

Jesus Christ, Fashion Superstar

In Bondage (Or: The one that makes people uncomfortable.)

By Popular Demand: Underage Chinese Olympic Gymnast

Soy Rage: The Dark Secret of Trader Joes

You don't get headlines like that with keywords.

I get the need for traffic. I understand that this is the way things work in this medium. Newspaper headlines were written with the purpose of grabbing you on your way to the subway, and blog headlines are written with the purpose of grabbing you on a search for "pregnant mom sex," as Beth reminds me.

You know how there's NABLOPOMO? I kind of wish there were one month where people just wrote the best freaking headlines possible, search engines be damned.

Dara Torres, an Olympian after my own heart

From left to right: Alice Bradley, Maggie Mason, Kim, Me not so subtly hiding my bare flabby triceps, Dara Torres, Jill, Tracey Gaughran-Perez, Amy Storch, gorgeous bebe Ezra, Dory Devlin . Also Mr. Fancy Photographer Guy: Fish-eye lenses may be awesome for 1980's Tom Petty videos but they are not kind to the otherwise trim subjects on either ends of the photo.

It isn't often I am invited to sit down with a real live uber Olympic swimmer and have the opportunity to interview her, all courtesy of the very kind folks at HP and their whole HP Moms for Simplicity dealio. (And no they didn't pay me to say I love their printers and thank them kindly for making Mac-compatible doodads and would really like a Vivian Tam laptop to give away on Cool Mom Picks but thought I'd just throw it in there anyway.)

Only problem is, what do I ask a real live uber Olympic Swimmer, especially she just happens to be Dara Torres and I literally cannot peel my eyes from her abs.

-So um...water huh. You like water, right?
-Is it true that you can slice prime rib with those abs?
-Hey, remember that time you won all those medals? That was cool, right?
-Kind of funny that you don't like fish and you're a swimmer, right?
-So, we're supposed to talk about how technology simplifies our lives. You go first.
-You train how many hours a day? Wow...wouldn't you rather be playing Wii or something? That's what I'd be doing.

I was definitely out of my league.

But as it turns out, there is one subject that unites all women, both uber Olympian and mere mortal -




Rock of Love.

Yeah, it might have gone a little better had I been miked. But still.

(And if the video is not working, here's what you missed: Love the trainwrecks, hope our daughters don't grow up like this, rooting for Taya, Farrah needs help.)

See? Olympians are just like us! Only...not.

Meanwhile...OMG TAYA.

---
Update: If you want to check out the HP Moms for Simplicity site it's up and running. (And hey, I'm there too!) You can also enter to win a $5,000 tech makeover and a trip to watch Dara compete which is totally mindblowing.

Easter v Passover Smackdown 2009

Easter eggs on acid, courtesy Mahar Dry Goods

Once again, Peaster has come and gone in my mother's household, only this time with less political outrage than years past and more forcing my aunt and uncle to sit through "Come on Thalia, sing When I'm 64 for everyone!" Personally I prefer it this way.

On the Passover side, we had children eating matzoh, children licking matzoh, children asking for more matzoh, children fighting over who got more butter on her matzoh. Which flies in the face of my earlier theory that my kids will only eat foods made out of leavened white flour. So hooray for small favors!

On the Easter side, we had Easter egg dying, Easter egg tie-dyeing, Easter egg hunting, and Easter egg smashing while Sage yelled, "Uh oh - egg fall down."

Yes Sage, egg fall down because you hurled it to the ground with great, deliberate force, my little Nolan Ryan.

I call it: Rare Moment with Unbroken Egg

Also on the Easter side was a much rehearsed performance art interpretation of Little Bunny Foo Foo caught on camera, with my mother alternately acting out the Goon or Little Bunny Foo Foo, depending on which character Thalia wanted to take and how interested she was in wielding a wand. (I'd post the video if I hadn't left my camera at my mom's house. D'oh.)

But then, on the Passover side, there was a rousing atonal triple chorus of Dayenu complete with spilled juice, and a Two Minute Haggadah after which Thalia declared her favorite part was "the frogs."

Final Score:

Eh, it's a wash. So I guess we all win. That's what's awesome about Peaster.

13 again

*Updated with blog link

Someone recently pointed me towards the blog of her 8th grade daughter and I was instantly transported.

maybe it was the way it was written with all lowercase and no punctuation except in random places

Maybe it was something about the brooding expressions of faux pretension, the description of "unliveable" days and a week filled with "adventure and fabulous outfits."

Maybe it was the combination of Disney jewelry and heavy black eyeliner on the authors, that decades-old symbol of the weighty straddle between childhood and womanhood.

In any case, I had hardly read three posts before I was hurled back in time a quarter century (eek) with Lysa and Rachel and Hally and Terri and other assorted adolescent misfit friends, memorizing the words to Rapture, trying to decide if we'd let boyfriends feel us up, and pretending to get high off the smoke wafting from incense sticks.

It seems so long ago. It seems like yesterday.

The days of circles over i's. The days of sorting MnMs into piles before we ate them. The days of making out with short boys (hi Steve!) next to the bike racks behind school and hoping we wouldn't get caught--but actually hoping we'd get caught. The days of Midsummer Night's Dream rehearsals with the single greatest English teacher of all time ever (hi Dee O'Brien!). The days of testing limits and experimenting with identity, sexuality and blue eyeliner.

And of course, the single greatest joy any thirteen year-old girl could ever hope for: Being told you look 15.

"Ok, this is gonna sound very old of me," Hally wrote me after I shared the blog with her, "but I can 't even fathom what we would have been like as 8th graders in this modern age."

I imagine we would have been pretty much the same. Tortured and awkward and hormonal and creative, exploring our feelings through writing and art only with one major difference: We'd be putting it out there for anyone to read.

I imagine the exhibitionists in us would have liked it; even if our adult selves would have been mortified so many years later.

What are your strongest memories of thirteen? Do you think you'd have been blogging then?

The terrible twos: Even better the second time around!

I had completely forgotten how the term "terrible twos" is a misnomer, as it actually starts way earlier. Way. Or maybe it just feels that way because when you're deep in the throes of it, a few months is a damn long time.

Or perhaps, skipping the terrible twos and heading right to bershon.

Sage is now creeping up on 23 months (is it possible?) and, like her sister, has decided to enter the wonderful world of dog-poking, cat-jabbing, cereal-flinging, tantrum-throwing, block tower-wrecking, couch-scribbling, mommy-torturing fun.

Of course unlike her sister at this age, Sage has a sibling whose hair she can pull too. So that's excellent.

I swear I never thought I'd utter phrases (generally yelled from another room) like DO I HAVE TO SEPARATE YOU TWO? And STOP BITING YOUR SISTER. And I AM DRAWING AN INVISIBLE LINE BETWEEN YOU AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO CROSS IT.

I sound just like a bad Bill Cosby routine from the 80s and I kind of resent it. Just once I would like to be like, IF YOU TWO KEEPING HUGGING EACH OTHER AND BEING NICE TO EACH OTHER ALL DAY I WILL HAVE TO COME IN THERE AND MAKE YOU EAT DESSERT!

It could happen.

Indeed Sage is finding plenty of fun ways to keep us entertained even when she's not in the room with Thalia. Nother binkieeeeee! she screeches every night. Two binkies. She needs two now. Can't sleep with just one - oh no, that would be akin to putting her to sleep on a bed of barbed wire with a dog poop pillow. The two binkie thing is particularly awesome considering the fact that we can hardly ever keep track of the first one. If there is a sock monster which steals your footwear from the dryer, then we have its cousin, the binkie monster, which chews up pacifiers in the night.

We know it's not about second binkies. It's all about the insatiable id of the nearly two year-old.

Sage's own favorite expression these days is ME TOOOO! Usually repeated and with great consistency in rhythm and tone (Me toooo Me toooo me toooo Me tooo) until we agree to do for her whatever it is we just did for her big sister. It could be giving her a cookie. It could be giving her a time out. Really, it doesn't matter as long as she does it toooo. Otherwise - pouting. Tears. Screaming.

Her next favorite word is nowwwwww, as in BINKIE NOWWWWWWW. We are trying very hard to replace it with please.

Also, pertinent to nothing, she likes to scour the apartment for things to put on her head.


At least under a colander I can't see her snarling at me.