I just left a comment on a friend's blog -- seriously, like five minutes ago -- and the comment involved one of Those Stories. Those Stories are the stories that are too embarrassing to tell on my own blog. Obviously, I don't have many of Those Stories, because I don't have much shame. It's been well-established that I am a thumping idiot who regularly assaults the very idea of human dignity, so why hold back further evidence to the blog's thesis? That's just not how I do things around here. I am way scientific. Occasionally I meet people and realize that wow, it IS kind of awkward when I'm all, "So what's your dog's name?" and they're all, "I remember the time your dog jumped into your toilet! That was hilarious!" But I usually get over that, and chances are even if you DON'T read my blog you've heard the toilet dog story, because I like to tell that one at fancy dinner parties. But! Anyway! My point is, at one time in my life I had standards and would not stoop to completely humiliating myself just for the sake of a blog entry, and 1) that time is past,... Read more →

So I have only thrown up twice this week. Quick! Let me know you've read that sentence (use some hand signals, or just cough kind of pointedly) so I can delete it. My blog has become a passive aggressive ASSHOLE, and has somehow artificial-intelligenced itself into my digestive tract so anytime I mention feeling relatively okay it decides to punish me. (Shit. I bet it's reading that paragraph right now. Quick! Pretend we're talking about something else.) ...and then I was like, OH MY GOD, there's a llama in the backyard! But it was only the hydrangea. Dog butts: for when you cannot think of an appropriate segue. So I'm somewhere in the vicinity of 11 weeks, and starting to feel like I might just make it out of this thing alive. Last week was definitely the worst -- I threw up pretty much every night, was unable to eat dinner, and then woke up every morning with crashing blood sugar and ravenous hunger, but was always faced with three smaller beings who insist on being fed first, even though SOME OF THEM eat food that smells like rancid-cold-cut-and-mackerel salad, I AM NOT SAYING WHO. Whut? Can't I horf cat... Read more →

Oh hi. I'm busy. Very busy. Very busy with various digestive quandaries, including: seriously, how hard is it to make a damn slice of toast in the morning, especially since you KNOW that's all it takes to stave off the vomiting, you frigging dumbass? and also: hmm, since I just threw up a still-eerily intact prenatal vitamin, does that mean I have to take another one? That last question is actually rather complicated, since prenatal vitamins have gone ALL KINDS OF FANCY now, and I am now required to take TWO pills everyday. One being the run-of-the-mill multivitamin, and the other being a space-age omega-3 DHA capsule, and only the fishy-tasting DHA pill seemed to come up undigested but the two pills are sealed together in the little foil packets so I cant just take another DHA pill and aaaaahhhhhhh mah baby needs its brain pillz! Or could I maybe get away with a My First Flintstones? I do love the taste of purple. I was describing the new generation of prenatal vitamins to my sister-in-law this weekend, and she was rather appalled. "So babies are already smarter than their parents by the time they're BORN?" she asked. "That's bullshit.... Read more →

"Mama in der? Mmma an na na a CHOUND? In der? IN DER?" (Mama, do you hear the sound that is coming from that general direction over there?) "A cow! Jump cow oh uh na amoon!" (The cow jumped over the moon.) "A TRAIN! A TRAIN! CHOO CHOO!" (A TRAIN! A TRAIN! OMFG!) "Aw, a boo hurt! Na ma a ban aid? Boots?" (I have injured myself and require a licensed-character Band-Aid.) "RAWR! RAWR! Onster anna book anna yoo turn da page! Oh no! (There's a monster at the end of this book and you turned the page! Oh no!) "No poop." (I don't care what you smell, woman.) "Oh no! A messth! Whew! Dapeart? Okay." (I would like to reverse my earlier position re: poop.) "I know. In der. A dridge. Ohhh, down. An tuntel. Up up up an der." (A complicated description of the engineering of drawbridges. I am told I wouldn't understand.) "Oh maaaannnnn!" (Success! Swiper the Fox has been foiled yet again!) "A nack? Okay nack. Nack oh der." (May I have a snack? Actually, I'm just going to go ahead and answer in the affirmative that yes, I may have a snack. And I'm going... Read more →

I had my first dream about the baby this week. I was frantically ordering baby gear from Amazon at the last minute (note to self: we already have a swing and a crib aquarium, but we do need BATTERIES. you cannot parent without BATTERIES) when it was suddenly time for my scheduled c-section, and then suddenly someone handed me the baby. A big fat naked baby boy, who nursed easily and awesomely, and was just about the cutest thing ever, although he looked nothing like Noah. And oh my GOD, his thighs. I couldn't stop squishing them. I loved him completely, and was sorry to wake up and remember that October is still a long time away. I had baby dreams all the time when I was pregnant with Noah, but never NICE dreams. They always involved the baby not being human, or us being woefully unprepared for his arrival (I still remember one where we were desperately trying to buy a carseat, and I lost the baby in an endless sea of racks of Washington Redskins sweatshirts.) The baby was always a boy, even before we knew we were having a boy, although I wonder if that was just... Read more →

In my long and illustrious career of bothering minor celebrities, I have: 1) Swiped fried calamari from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. 2) Screamed IMABIGFAN!! at Ted Allen outside a wine festival while waving a commemorative wine glass at him. 3) Ate fondue with Project Runway's Laura Bennett; spilled fondue on self. 4) Non-consensually hugged Alan Cumming in the bathroom line of a restaurant. 5) Stared slack-jawed at 30 Rock's Judah Friedlander while he ate ravioli with his family. LESSON FOR CELEBRITIES: if you see me, and there appears to be food involved in the scenario, RUN AWAY. A few weeks ago, Jason got an email from someone at the Food Network. They were looking for local "food people" to participate in a new travel series that would profile a local chef. I was invited too. Basically: Food Network People: We need some DC-area foodie people for this show. Google: Here you go! Food Network People: Oh look, he's married! Hmm, maybe she's a foodblogger too! *Food Network People visit my blog on the day this entry was posted * Food Network People: Well, THAT was easy. LESSON FOR BLOGGERS: Visibility on Google is important, even if your blog is... Read more →

People, I have what may be the best story ever -- in the HISTORY OF EVER -- to tell you. Seriously. My brain is leaking out my nose in frustration because to TELL you the story I have to TYPE the story and the story is just long enough to require both the space bar AND punctuation. Dammit. Oh man, it's so good. It involves both 1) celebrities and 2) me being an idiot around celebrities and also 3) a kind of hot guy lifting my shirt to attach a microphone to the waistband of my maternity pants. It's got everything! I should probably start typing it, instead of this, because I feel very tempted to go off on a Tangent. Okay! FOCUS! I will get to typing THAT STORY, and direct you in the meantime towards this week's Zero to Forty update at Alpha Mom, and also to interject a housekeeping thingie for anyone (Bueller?) wondering where today's Advice Smackdown column is. Today's Advice Smackdown column is off having a fabulous time in the future, i.e. tomorrow. We're switching the publishing schedule to Monday/Thursday/Friday for the sake of my very tenuous sanity. That is all. As you were. I'll... Read more →

THINGS MY CHILD WILL SAY IN FRONT OF ME, BUT NOT IN FRONT OF ANYONE ELSE, INCLUDING THE [email protected]* VIDEO CAMERA, WHICH MEANS ACCORDING TO THE LAWS OF BLOG IT'S LIKE HE NEVER SAID THEM AT ALL: 1. Hmmm. I know! 2. ONE MINUTE! 3. Dog! Dog! Where arrrrre you? 4. Won, Too, Tee, ready or not here I come! 5. Oh mah gawd! WORDS MY CHILD CAN READ VIA THE REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS, BUT ONLY IN FRONT OF ME BUT I SWEAR, PEOPLE, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP: 1. Oops 2. Egg 3. Noah 4. Hot 5. Ass NUMBERS MY CHILD LEAVES OUT WHILE HE COUNTS TO TWENTY: 1. Four NUMBER OF TIMES IN THE PAST THREE DAYS I HAVE TACKLED MY CHILD, DIPPED HIM IN CADBURY CREME EGG FONDANT AND SWALLOWED HIM WHOLE: 1. 567,987,001 I expected pregnancy to sort-of suck. I mean, honestly, it sucked last time too. Although I would probably never let myself use that word, since I still remember walking through the pregnancy and family planning section of the bookstore years ago, a massive dose of Clomid coursing through my system, and seeing that book called "Pregnancy Sucks." And I blinked and sniffed and... Read more →

Red whore panties + C-section scar + stretch marks = WINNER (No, I have no idea why I am posting this. It seemed vaguely on-topic, but now that I'm looking at it I realize it's probably just gross. But I know that once I hit the publish button I am going to take a nap. So perhaps Britney-style debasement just seems a lot simpler at this point than a lot of typing and words and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.) Read more →

I had my first official prenatal visit this morning, during which I came about 30 seconds from getting a THIRD ultrasound, except that my doctor happened to flip back a page in my chart while the machine was warming up. "Oh!" he said, "We saw the heartbeat already, so we don't need another one just yet." Dammit. I got a pap smear instead. So, I really do like my doctor, although I also occasionally want to stab him in the ears with a fork, or maybe one of the handy Ortho-Tri-Cyclen pens he keeps in a cup on his desk. Like today, when he asked me how I was feeling. Which, you know, BAD. AWFUL. Like, I-have-only-told-the-Internet-half-of-it bad and awful. The migraines, the insomnia, the fact that I made my two-year-old cry yesterday (twice) simply through the power of my drained-of-patience angry-mommy voice. (I'm not counting the time I simply screamed at him to STOP CRYING! STOP CRYING RIGHT NOW! because...come on. He was ALREADY crying. I'm sure I didn't help the situation but HE TOTALLY STARTED IT.) (Don't let the sarcasm fool you, of course. I could totally die from the guilt right now, especially since I yelled at... Read more →