Kizzy's been begging to be taken outside on his harness every day. He doesn't care that it's cold. He doesn't care that people keep asking if we got a dog when they see us from across the street. He doesn't care that he's a pussy (SEE WHAT I DID THERE) when it comes to loud noises.

Or maybe he does now.

Usually it's me that takes him outside, but the other day I went to pick up a prescription and some stuff for spaghetti and came home to this.

I stared at Beloved. "How?"

Him: "There was a loud noise. He freaked out at the garbage can."

Me: "But ... how? There's no blood. No cut."

Him: "I know. Um? I don't know. He's magic."

HOW?

"He's in the forest. Behind my house."

"My blog is my spirit animal." OMG.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFCtD4IO_4] 

It's the fifth anniversary of the publication of my parenting anthology, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, this year, and so in honor of Mother's Day coming up, I rang up two of my contributors -- Alice Bradley and Eden Kennedy -- who went on to write their own parenting tome, LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES. We decided what might be really fun to do in a veiled attempt to remind you our books make excellent Mother's Day gifts for the lovelies in your life is update you on one of our vignettes from SIFTW and ponder which bit of baby advice from LPAB works for tweens, which we all now have.

SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, Edited by Rita Arens -- buy it here!

I'm going to update my essay, "Sleep Cycles." (p. 25) Originally I included these stages of adult sleep cycles: 1) Alcohol-induced 2) Insomnia-Related 3) The Love Bug 4) New Baby-Induced 5) Toddler-Induced. Clearly, I had a toddler when I wrote this post. There are all sorts of other reasons you can't sleep after becoming a parent. 

My daughter is now nine. Since the Toddler-Induced days, I've also experienced the following sleep disturbances:

6) Growing-Child-in-My-Bed-Induced. My daughter has slept through the night since she was around four or five. It was a gradual thing, when the waking up and crying three times a night became waking up and walking into my bedroom once a night to try to crawl in where it was warm. At first, I gave in (it was always my side of the bed she approached, of course) and let her crawl in, only to find her elbow in my ear, her bony butt in my hip and the amount of body heat with me in the middle unable to crawl out from under the covers or even slip out a temperature-regulating foot stifling. This led to the next stage.

7) Trying-to-Sleep-in-a-Twin-Bed-Induced. When she showed up in the middle of the night, I'd take her back to her own bed and lie down with her, thinking of course I would get up and go back to my own, queen-sized bed in a few minutes. Of course, inevitably I'd lie down, fall asleep, and then be on that dividing line between too tired and too lazy to go back to my own bed even though trying to get any sleep with a grade-school-aged child in a twin bed is just plain ridiculous.

8) Sleepover-Induced. Whether there's an extra kid in my house or my girl is somewhere other than her own bed, I just don't sleep so well, period. I'm going to absolutely die when she goes to college.

I haven't yet gotten to the stages of driving- and dating-induced sleep problems. God help me when I do.

LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES! By Alice Bradley & Eden M. Kennedy -- buy it here!

NOW. For the LPAB baby advice that applies to a tween. 

Ahem.

I'm staring at "This Is Overly Difficult, and I Have Changed My Mind." (p. 142) I hope Eden and Alice don't mind if I update their advice for tweens.

Having a baby tween will:

• Win you the approval of the far right Update! As long as you don't end up with a pregnant tween!
• Allow you to start one of those "mommy blogs" everyone's been talking about Update! You'll realize when your kid hits around six OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE? I'M A FUCKING LIFESTYLE BLOGGER. THERE ARE NO MOMMYBLOGS.
• Give you an excuse to expose your nipples in public Update! Give you an excuse to revisit the eighties when your daughter asks for neon socks.
• Allow you to catch up on all those episodes of Sesame Street you've missed. Update! Allow you to catch on to all that is wrong with Disney programming for tweens.
• Exercise your arms from hours of vigorous stroller-pushing and baby-rocking. Update! Exercise your jaws from all those hours of teeth grinding. 
• Provide you with someone to blame for all those thwarted ambitions. There is no need for an update here. Move along.

Read Eden's post here and Alice's post here. And don't forget how lovely books are, especially for pregnant people, new moms, or anyone who prefers to laugh rather than to cry when thinking about children. Who wants to win a set of both books? One entry for each comment, every comment counts, enter as often as you like. I'll ship the winner the books directly from Amazon. The contest ends at noon CT on Monday, May 6 to ship in time for Mother's Day!

UPDATE: Congratulations, Julia! I'll be contacting you for your address. You win both copies!

Scene: Elementary school PTA fundraiser

I shifted from foot to foot. I'd been volunteering for an hour more than my expected 5-6:15 shift. I was hot, and tired, and hungry, and surrounded by children who I did not birth who wanted the soda I was selling but didn't have any money. And they were dressed as their favorite celebrities.

I smiled brightly as much as I could, not wanting to scare them with my inner monologue.

Then she walked past. Probably a sixth grader, dressed as I assume Taylor Swift complete with shocking red lipstick imperfectly applied. She looked at the soda.

"I wish I had money," she said. "It mocks me."

I smiled for real, because that girl is my kind of people.

We're doing some stuff to the kitchen in Chateau Travolta. I know, we've been doing stuff to it for the past five years, but this time, it's personal. As such, I have over half of the stuff that was in our cupboards sitting in tubs in my office, where I work. This is a little like working in the back storage area of Goodwill. As someone who gets anxious with too much clutter, I've found it's important to not look backwards, much as a mountain climber should not look down.

As I was taking the stuff out of the drawers and cupboards, I was tempted to donate more than half of it. We've been working from about one-fourth of our normal stash of tableware, and except that it's not the cute stuff, I've barely noticed. Beloved and I are of different minds about kitchenware.

I'm a slash-and-burn minimalist about pretty much everything but books. He's a yes-we-do-need-to-keep-eight-Pyrex-bowls type. If I let him have his way, he'd have at least twenty more one-use kitchen appliances than we have. I question the need for even a waffle iron. We have a waffle iron, and also a milkshake maker. (!)

Today I was reading Tanis Miller's ode to Tupperware, and I thought how funny our relationships to our food preparation and storage accouterments are. I fear many of my cupboards, because things have a tendency of falling on my head -- PARTICULARLY TUPPERWARE. And also, occasionally, chocolate chips, because all the baking stuff is stuffed into one tiny upper cupboard. I live in fear of the day the open baking soda box will submit to gravity.

Does one need eight Pyrex bowls? Am I alone in my disdain for 32 drinking glasses?

This morning while waiting for the bus, my daughter and I were looking at the llama picture I have saved to my desktop. I got it somewhere from StumbleUpon and I don't remember where. It doesn't matter, any llama picture will do. I have the llama on the desktop because the llama makes me happy. How can you look at a llama and not smile?

We started talking about things that make us laugh when we are stressed out. I told her about the motivational wolf my sister sent me years ago. I guess the motivational wolf is a whole thing -- I tried to figure out where it started and I guess I'm going to blame Reddit. My wolf looks like this.

Try to source me, motherfucker.

My daughter sort of didn't get the humor in my motivational wolf, which I suppose makes sense, because she hasn't yet had to replace toner. She thought I should have a motivational cow instead, because it would be ... wait for it ... moo-tivational.

This story is going nowhere, but the llama plus the wolf plus the cow reminded me of the reviews of this wolf t-shirt on Amazon, which are nothing short of comedy gold.

Today that is all I have. I also wrote about muffin tops on BlogHer.

The little angel ate too fast last night at dinner, and something went down the wrong tube. She kept hacking long after she should've been able to stop, to the point where it got humorous.

Me: "Well, it's stupid that humans eat and breath out of the same orifice, really. So much margin for error."

Her: "YACKACCCOUUUUGHG"

Me: "I mean, I think dolphins have two holes."

Her: "CGOAOGFAHSEASEAAASHLRG"

Him: "It could be worse. You could eat and poop out the same hole."

Her: (recovering) "Squids only have one hole."*

*I looked this up. It's actually sea anemone, but hey? SCIENCE!

Yesterday I documented our decision to treat Sir Charles Buttonsworth's diabetes on BlogHer.

There were requests for video of Kizzy's insanity. Happy Friday!