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.

There is a present on the very last slide.

Setting: Waiting for school bus

Her: Your breath smells like coffee.

Me: Your hair smells like hair.

Her: Your coat smells like cold.

Me: Good one.

This Friday night at 7 pm, I'm going to be reading from THE OBVIOUS GAME with my former professor and mentor, Michael Pritchett, author of THE MELANCHOLY FATE OF CAPT. LEWIS. (Yes, it's THAT Capt. Lewis. The one who hung out with Clark.) I'm not sure if Michael will be reading from TMFoCL or his novel-in-progress, but I have heard him read from both, and his stage delivery is awesome. You'll be quite convinced he hates writing with the power of a thousand suns, but you know, in a good way. I find it existentially hilarious.

It has occurred to me that I should probably practice for this reading. I have never read from a novel before. I have also not had too much time to get nervous about it, because last week MAJOR CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY and also MOMMY TOTALLY UNDERDELIVERED ON THE EASTER BASKET and then THIS SATURDAY IS THE LITTLE ANGEL'S BIRTHDAY and then OUR CAT JUST DIED AND A BUNCH OF OTHER CRAZY SHIT WENT DOWN IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES and well, holy hell. It's Monday, I don't have a birthday card for my daughter yet (I do have the big gift, but she probably needs some other little things to open), I don't have a game plan for anything and I'm taking a SEWING CLASS on Thursday, the night before my parents and sister arrive to stay with us for said reading and birthday party and oh, holy hell, I hope I've scrubbed the smell of Buttonsworth's last accident out of the playroom carpet (hydrogen peroxide and baking soda).

If you want to attend the reading, all the details are on this Evite. The reading will be from 7-9 at The Writers Place in Kansas City. Both Michael and I will have some books for sale or to sign, and I'll bring some signed bookplates for anyone who wants one unless I run out. Thanks, as always, for all your support of my writing. It means so much.

Thanks so much, everyone, for all your kind words about Buttonsworth. I'm still in a period of mourning and distracting myself with work, so today I'm going to put up a how-to post on surviving road trips. Not that I have any experience or anything. 

---

My husband, daughter and I live in Kansas City. Both sets of our parents live in Iowa. Which means: road trips. Lots of them. Like almost every month, and the drive is from three to five hours each way.

You'd think in the era of portable DVD players, iPads, iPhones and NOOKs that entertaining oneself in the car for a few hours would be cheesecake. This, unfortunately, is not the case. My daughter just started liking to play digital games in the last year. I may not win any mother-of-the-year awards for saying this, but there were days when I would beg her to just play a game so I didn't have to play one more round of I Spy while twisting myself around so uncomfortably in the front seat to look at her that I actually pulled a back muscle once. Here are some ways to pass the time we've developed for our now eight-year-old road-tripper.

Credit Image: Damian Gadal on Flickr

Stories

This is a broad category that includes everything from reading a story to writing a story to her writing a bit and then me writing a bit to her creating graphic novels. There are many websites that let you turn a story your child writes into a book. (Speaking of that, I have three sitting here on my desk to be scanned and converted!)

Word Games

Think of the game show that is least annoying to you and try to convert it to a car version. I personally like Wheel of Fortune, so we play Hangman a lot. Although -- hangman? Seriously? Who came up with this draconian way of losing? I'd like to say I've come up with a kinder, gentler version, but I haven't. I just try really hard not to lose.

Conversation

How many times do you actually make conversation -- like cocktail party conversation -- with your kid? I usually don't -- we talk about what happened that day or what we're having for dinner or how she really feels strongly she does not have enough pairs of leggings. On road trips, I've learned how her favorite color has changed from blue to purple, who her friends are, what she wants to be when she grows up and whether or not she thinks she'll have kids. Some of my favorite conversations have happened in the car.

So, there you have it. Trust me, I'm no saint -- these are the things I go to AFTER she has watched as many movies as she will watch and played as many games as she will play and read as many books as she will read. I hate riding in cars for long periods of time and prefer to spend my own time working on a novel or with my nose in a book. But if we must interact while trapped in a small box for hours, these are my favorite ways to do it.

How do you survive roadies?

When we were dealing with Petunia's diabetes diagnosis, my best friend told me about Ira Glass and his dog, Piney. I guess Ira's dog bites people and has crazy allergies -- he has to eat a different protein/starch combo every eight months until he gets allergic to it. Steph said she heard Ira interviewed on NPR, and he was talking about how taking care of Piney had kind of become his life.

Yesterday afternoon, I called the vet to check on Buttonsworth, who had been there all day getting enema after enema. The vet said the first one had worked, but nothing since then, and he was trying and trying but getting nothing, and the next step would be to put him under and, I don't know, dig it out of him, but that had risks, and he'd found some medicine, but it cost $60 a month and needed to be given three times a day, and there was really no guarantee it would work.

I started crying. I called Beloved. We talked about two shots a day and three pills a day that might not work and all the enemas and the fact that Buttonsworth had developed megacolon and it might just never work properly again, and I realized I was becoming like Ira Glass. I've been at the vet's office more times in the last month than the grocery store. I'm was watching Buttonsworth like a hawk. My anxiety is through the roof.

And I can't make him poop. At some point, you can become obsessed, and I was becoming obsessed, perhaps even to the detriment of poor Buttonsworth, who probably did not like all the enemas or the pain of constipation.

We made the decision not to even bring him home, because if we brought him home, I didn't know if I could bear to take him back. I called the vet back, told him to stop with the enemas, we were coming in to say goodbye.

I told the little angel, who had been prepared that this might happen. The child is growing very resilient to pet death, much more so than I have. We got in Vicki and drove to the vet's office. They brought out Buttonsworth, and the three of us covered his face in kisses and told him how much we loved him and how proud of him we were. Then we donated his insulin and syringes. Beloved and the little angel stopped for ice cream on the way home, even though we hadn't had dinner yet. I called my family and sobbed my way home. The little angel and I watched two episodes of Clean House. I had to go downstairs during book time because I couldn't stop crying. I looked at all my photos of Buttonsworth and asked myself how, again, I keep picking these sick cats? But as I looked at the pictures, I couldn't regret adopting him, even though the final total on this month was nearly a thousand dollars and he still died. He kept Beloved company during the months of unemployment. He taught Kizzy to sleep on the little angel's bed. He taught us to not be afraid of cat diabetes like we were before. He wagged his little Manx tail and rumblepurred and gave us so much love and happiness for the short four months that he was here.

So, farewell, Sir Charles Buttonsworth. We will miss you. And we are proud to say the day you died, we had finally stabilized your blood sugar. So in that we did not fail you.

Inches of snow that fell in my yard this weekend: 9

Inches of poop that came out of Buttonsworth after one enema at the emergency vet on Saturday: 6

Inches of poop remaining in Buttonsworth now: 6

Number of enemas the emergency vet wanted to give him: 5

Amount the emergency vet would charge for this service: $918

Amount I paid to get him one enema and subcutaneous fluids: $166

Number of times Buttonsworth would have died this weekend if he hadn't had an enema: 1

Number of enemas Buttonsworth has had in the past three weeks: 7 and counting

Amount of money we have spent on vets and medicine for Buttonsworth this month: $674.41 and counting

Number of months we have owned Buttonsworth: 4

Number of weeks we are giving him on a new medicine to see if we can get his colon to work: 2

Number of weeks he has been on insulin: 4

Number of hearts in this house that will be broken if the new medicine doesn't work: 3

Number of cats that will be left: 1

Number of cats my daughter desperately wants: 2

Chances of getting a second cat if Buttonsworth dies based on my husband's feelings: 0%

Number of vet trips in the past seven days: 3

Number of posts on Surrender, Dorothy in the past seven days: 2

Number of days I've wanted to crawl back in bed within twenty minutes of getting out of it: 7

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!