I'm Amy. Hiya.

I started this here website back in 2003, when I lived in Washington, DC with my husband and cat, worked as an editor for a financial publishing company and bought a lot of handbags. I found myself terribly fascinating. 

Now the husband, cat and I all live in the suburbs, plus a dog and too many kids and a minivan. I KNOW, RIGHT? I am...not really all that interesting any more, but apparently that's not much of a requirement for keeping up a blog, particularly a blog that mostly involves stories about times you got lost or fell down or did something spectacularly stupid. That's where I'm a viking!

I have three children, all boys. Noah was born in September 2005. Ezra followed in October 2008. Isaac -- better known as Ike -- arrived in June 2011. My handbag now mostly holds a lot of burp rags, Matchbox cars and very small pairs of Go Diego Go underpants. Our house is very loud, very messy and smells like feet all the time.

While whether or not my life makes for good blog material is very much up for debate, it's a pretty damn awesome one to actually live, if you ask me.

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While this blog is (and always has been) (and always will be! as God is my witness!) primarily a forum for my raging neurotic day-to-day navel-gazing, I am also a regular columnist over at AlphaMom. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays you can find my long-running Advice Smackdown, where I attempt to dose out the common sense and solve your deep, personal (or parenting or pregnancy or in-law-drama-related) problems. If you've got a question you'd like me to tackle for you, please send it to amyadvice[at]gmail.com. 

I also documented my second pregnancy in the form of a week-by-week guide called Zero to Forty. People seem to like it! Maybe you will too, if you are of the currently knocked-up persuasion. 

And! I help oversee and regularly contribute to the Mamapop circle of blogging awesomosity: pop culture and gossip at Mamapop; general lifestyle/newsy nuggets at Moxiebird.

I have a blog at Babble called Amalah's West -- that gets updated once a week, on whatever day I think of something I want to say that doesn't fit anywhere else.

I've also held blogging and columnist gigs at CafeMom, made Babble's list of top 50 Mommybloggers and Twitter Moms, spoken at blogging conferences (including BlogHer and SXSW), been featured in The Washington Times, Washingtonian and Bethesda Magazines, AND have been nominated for (and occasionally even won) various blogging-related awards of various distinction. 

*spikes football*

*realizes what an incredibly poor choice of move that is when one has forgotten to put on a bra*

This blog helps support my family. If you are interested in advertising or negotiating sponsored posts, thank you! Please contact the good folks at Federated Media for all advertising, or the Sway Group for other paid sponsorship/partnership opportunities. 

If you are interested in free product reviews, mentions, giveaways, guest posting or for someone to copy-and-paste your fascinating press release or EDITORIAL PITCH or STORY IDEA or PHOTO OF A REAL HOUSEWIFE DRINKING A PEPTOL-BISMOL-BRANDED COCKTAIL...please email somebody else. Seriously. I'm not that kind of blog. 

If you'd like to say hi, my email is amy[at]amalah.com. I try to say hi back most of the time. I also try to exercise and drink less wine, and by "try" I mean "make totally empty promises that my drunk ass cannot cash or wait, shit, I think I screwed that saying up." I'm also on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing. I sometimes remember that I have a Google+ account, but have completely forgotten my Facebook password and found that I kind of like it that way.