(Noah and Jason continue to hold on and fight the good-immune-system fight. Ezra has moved on from Pedialyte to bananas and toast, with distinctively mixed results. I am fighting off an encroaching post-stomach-flu sinus infection, because why the hell not? And Ike thinks it's all a bunch of malingering bullshit and would like to go to the playground already, GOD.) (In other words, hav sum pitchers. Hork.) PHASE ONE: Behold, a photo opportunity! PHASE TWO: A CHALLENGER APPEARS. PHASE THREE: A pile-on quickly follows. PHASE FOUR: Poorly-focused and unsynchronized hamming, but still with some promise. PHASE FOUR AND A HALF: Look at the camera and hold still, guys. No, I meant YOU look at the camera, not twist your brother's head like a Barbie doll, I mean... PHASE FOUR-AND-THREE-QUARTERS: Can you stop screaming "cheese" so loud? I think you're starting to freak the ba... PHASE FIVE: Foreshadowing of the inevitable. PHASE SIX: Hold up. That's not bad...maybe just one more second...if you two would just SMILE like NORMAL PEOPLE, PLEASE... PHASE SEVEN: Denouement. Heartbreaking yet oddly LOL-worthy denouement. EPILOGUE: The immediate shifting of blame and innocent stares of "What? Us? That? No." Read more →

Tuesday night, this post by Heather B got the two of us texting all nostalgically about Times My Kids Threw Up. (Yes, seriously. She managed to make my vomiting children sound endearing. Kind of.) And I helpfully tossed in a new anecdote: Ike was sick on Saturday night, alllll night, and around 4 am I basically let him barf directly into my hands because I was out of towels. (MY OVERSHARING KNOWS NO TECHNOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES OR LIMITS.) I washed my hands afterwards (promise), but it was all for naught. Just hours after our conversation I came down with the bug myself. Hard. Bad. Indecent in every way. To the point where you're sick with dehydration but even the tiniest sip of water won't stay down. (Though does anybody else have a problem with an inability to "sip" water when you're really, really thirsty? I kept telling myself "just a sip, just a sip!" because I knew my stomach was still in full rebellion mode, but then the second the water touched my parched tongue I was all, "GLOBBLE GULP MARRRRRRRRGHH SLARP.") (It's okay if it's just me. I know. I...know.) Anyway, I spent the entire day in bed yesterday. Around... Read more →

Hey! Remember when Thanksgiving happened? I do the same thing every year: I intend to ROCK OUT with a whole slew of Thanksgiving-related blog posts. I make such a big goddamn deal out of the holiday in real life that you'd think my blog would reflect that. Maybe take a yearly dive into recipe blogging and 500-word entries about napkins. Show you the real depths of my vintage glassware obsession. (It's deep, man. Like The Descent, only with more bowls.) Instead, I completely freak out over EVERYTHING that needs to be done in preparation for Thanksgiving that my blog basically sits silent while its author runs around like a headless turkey hopped up on coffee brine in the distant background. Then I gorge myself on challah-bread stuffing and sleep for four days straight. IN OTHER WORDS, will y'all please indulge me and look at some pictures? You actually don't have to really look at them — I'll never know if you keep your Minecraft window open — just type a fake-appreciative mmm-hmmm in the comments and I'll be happy. First: Something old. Or, well. A lot of somethings old. I have cobbled... Read more →

Ahoy there! This post is sponsored by Disney's Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two the video game. So don't tell my children, but the Discussions Have Begun around here. The "okay, when do we bite the bullet and take this crew to Disney World" discussions. Do we wait until all three of them have hit the minimum height requirement for most of the rides? Or go sooner, while they're all younger and we might get more OMG AMAZEBALLS CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OMG bang for our bucks? Is Cinderella's castle still listing to the left like that? Where are my legs? What's with all the shrubbery in the photo? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT MY PARENTS' PHOTO FRAMING DECISIONS. My family took two trips to Disney World: Once when I was an adorable little five year old. FACT: I loved Robin Hood because there was a song in the movie that mentioned the word "underwear." And then again when I was a tragically awkward 12 year old: Oh dear God. So...yeah. I actually remember each trip pretty equally. When I was five, the highlight was the Character Breakfast. I met Snow White and my brain melted out my ears. I... Read more →

OMG. So I have like, 40 million things to do today. And approximately 30 million of those things may or may not involve butter. (Plus I obviously need to go to the store and buy some more butter.) But I just got our photos from a photo shoot with Blue Lily Photography we did last month, for the second October in a row. (Once again: I have the best boss who gives out the best Christmas presents.) Last year, Ike was a four-month-old blobby of suspicion. This year, he proudly moved up the ranks to fully accredited goofball: He's in good company, obvs: Despite bribing them with toys and threatening their very lives, my gorgeous children were a horrifically uncooperative pack, I must admit. Luckily, Tyler stumbled on the winning trick of getting them to look at the camera by ordering them to not look at the camera. Occasionally, we even managed to ALL look at the camera at the same time: (And by "occasionally," I of course mean "basically those three times.") And finally, presenting what may be my favorite photo of anyone, ever: I plan to use this photo as my universal reaction to everything from stupid PR... Read more →

OH HI. I ran off to Vegas. I did not get married or remarried (though I did basically find the wedding chapel OF MAH DREAMS) or spend several days locked on a roof with a chain-smoking monkey. In fact, the biggest trouble I got myself into involved getting mildly scolded by a hotel employee for sneaking into the Microsoft SharePoint 2012 conference without a badge. (Okay, I didn't sneak into the conference itself. I just sat in the developer's lounge and used the wifi for a few hours to edit and post conference-related blog posts.) (I did steal a cup of conference coffee, though. Possibly two cups. I KNOW, RIGHT? Who am I and when did I become such a scofflaw? VEGAS, BABY.) Let's see...other interesting things that happened in Vegas that will not stay in Vegas because what, like I have shame or a sense of propriety? 1) I won money! We're not big gamblers, but you can't go to Vegas and not put a few bucks into the weirdest branded slot machine you can find, especially one that is reaching soooo far to make any sort of sense in any sort of context, like... MALTESE OF FORTUNE KITTY... Read more →

Once upon a time, I noticed that deodorant labels had kind of lost their damn minds. It was no longer enough for a deodorant to promise you the basic trinity of Shit You Want It To Do — keep you dry, keep you non-smelly, keep your clothing not completely streaked in white chalky goo — because suddenly one single tube was promising at least seven different things. PH balance! Active Body Responsive! Moisturizing! Skin Nurturing! Smoothing! Hair Minimizing! Continually Renewing Fragrance! 24-hour wetness stank protection so yo ass don't even need to SHOWER with this shit, baby! And it needed to do all that while also looking less like a plastic tube of B.O. balm and more like some kind of fancy ornate perfume bottle with lots of pretty swirls and metallic accents. It's hard out there for a deodorant, apparently. So also once upon a time, I combined these Overly Deep Thoughts On Deodorant Labels with my compulsion to anthropomorphize inanimate objects and create elaborate soap operas with them. (WHAT.) Thus, the Deodorant Wars were born and I managed to accrue quite a collection of deodorants purchased specifcally for the series. Most of which I shoved in a drawer... Read more →

So remind me to tell you about the time AB Chao bought me a shot of bourbon and drunk-dialed Heather Armstrong. And then promptly shoved the phone at my drunken ass while I shrieked in panic. I JUST WANTED A PICTURE. YOU CAN'T DISAPPOINT A PICTURE. Later, I burst into drunken tears at the table while explaining to all the other lovely DC Design Camp attendees how AB and I know each other because you guys. You guyyyyyyssss. This. This right here. This lady and you people and the Internet and blogging and the ENTIRE PATH OF MY LIFE, plus also the universe and everything. Yes. I am very fun at parties. Always bring a towel, mostly because I will definitely spill something. (Yesterday it was coffee. I got up mid-session to refill my coffee and unscrewed the lid on an apparently still very full to-go container and coffee just fucking erupted out of the thing, all over me and the floor and like, inside drawers and cabinets and shit. And once again, I stood there doing little else besides PANICKED SHRIEKING because I have no coping skills.) LAY OFF ME I'M TRYING. My point is that I had a... Read more →

So I was going to post a video I took of Noah last night, when he wandered downstairs in his Muppet jammies and announced that he wanted to "vote." He went up to the TV and — amidst a sea of visual noise and percentages and red and blue— found a photo of President Obama, and touched it, iPad style. "Check! I voted!" he said. "Bock Obama is the President of the United States." And then he did a little happy dance. He also farted. I figured maybe I could edit that part out. But then I realized I'd probably have to write a whole wind-up about how we have actually never talked politics with Noah, and that he simply wanted Obama to win because Obama is the only president he's ever really known and thus, in his little change-adverse mind, Obama should continue being the president. The fact that his opinion JUST SO HAPPENED to overlap with ours was just an adorable coincidence and not the result of us trying to push him into a specific party affiliation or put him in t-shirts and hand him signs to promote our own adult agendas and gaaaahhhhh. I realized it was... Read more →

Today is the day. The day when all bloggers, blobbers, bloogers, Facebookers, Instagrammers, Twitheads and other Professional Oversharers are legally required (BY INTERNET LAW) to post smug-looking selfies while wearing "I VOTED" stickers. Ta-da! My job here is done. Now it's time for some coffee to further amp up my nerves until results time tonight. (Dear Maryland: VOTE YES ON 6, YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARDS.) Read more →