Last night I got all wound over Lynn Harris' article on Salon, which I'm covering on BlogHer on Monday. I started the post fifteen different ways, and no matter how I proceeded, I found myself on my high horse and riding. Standing on my soapbox and preaching, like the homeless guy who spouted whoremongers and hellfire on the Pentacrest at the University of Iowa in the mid-nineties.

It's something I sometimes do. I preach. I can't stand to see people treat each other with such disrespect. This isn't satire, this isn't comedy -- those comments are just MEAN.

I'll be offline for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. Please check out my piece on BlogHer on Monday, and enjoy your holiday. Go forth and let thee not be an ass.

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Read a review of Cat Ladies on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

This weekend we held The Baby Shower Heard Round the World for my best friend, Stephanie. I was asked to make a diaper cake for the shower. I looked it up online and found I would need 60 diapers rubber-banded together.

 

60 is, um, a lot.

I was supposed to use newborn diapers, but I've heard Steph's husband was 18 pounds when he was born (okay, maybe a little less), so I went with size 1. If you don't want Elmo to show, fold the design up inside.

The next step was to buy 8 yards of wide ribbon and 50 yards of narrow ribbon. I only used the narrow ribbon on the outer edge of each tier, so I totally could've gotten away with probably half the amount of narrow ribbon. I gave the overage to the little angel.

Next, you were supposed to use a baby bottle filled with candy for the center of the top tier, but Stephanie is much fancier than that, so I made a flower thingie.

 

The little angel chose these flowers from the bridal aisle at Hobby Lobby.

So then, you tie these itsy bitsy little bows around the rubber band on the outermost rows and sort of guess as to how many you need for each tier. Finally, hogtie the whole thing together into three tiers.

 

TA DA!!! My crafty magnum opus. This is all I've got.

Finally, when I was stuck in the Milwaukee airport for three years on Thursday, I asked my friend Sandee of Stems Flower Market (and who also sits across from me at work) how to make roses from Costco look pretty. She gave me some good advice.

 

Costco, bitches.

 

Ancient German secret.

 

These roses were so not open when I bought them. Sandee is a genius.

Happy shower, cute pregnant person! Can't wait to meet your baby girl. And neither can a certain redheaded person I happen to know well.

I was reading my friend Liz's blog yesterday. She wrote about how her daughter's teacher told her daughter that "poop" is a bad word, causing Liz and her partner to abandon their poop jokes.

I, lover of the English language, consider no words to be bad. Just sometimes inappropriately used.

I will not be winning any parenting awards when I say that I have a sailor's mouth, sometimes even around my daughter. I don't set out to say "fuck," it just occasionally happens. Still, it does make me somehow proud that she chastises me on my use of the word "stupid" but lets "fuck" sail right on by. Also, she never uses any of the Big Seven herself. We told her a while ago there are certain words that really sound horrible coming out of a child's mouth, and she must be old enough to drive in order to use them. Because only then can they truly be used properly.

This "stupid" thing, though -- I'm going through what Liz is going through with "poop." I've resulted to consulting The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate, which I keep sitting on my desk at work to frighten off IT people. Bring it on, kindergarten teacher.

Synonyms for "stupid" include:

• Asinine*
• Blockish
• Doltish
• Fatuitous
• Fatuous
• Witless

*One of my all-time favorite put-downs, because people can't tell if you've just called them an ass in polite company or not.

"Poop" alternatives:

• Feces
• Defecation
• Stercoraceous, stercorus (pertaining to feces)
• fecaloid (resembling feces)
• Feculent (fecal matter, full of) = WINNER, WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!

So thank you, teachers of America, for forcing us parents to elevate our grammar to say the exact same thing in a way our kids don't understand.

Well, I tried to oblige your requests for photos...

She hates cameras.

Here, Petunia shows off her cookie-dough face.

She has taken Bella's seat.

 

Which makes me miss Bella's silky coat.

 

But we do realize nothing is certain but change.

 

Halloween 2004

 

Halloween 2005

Halloween 2006

 

Halloween 2007

 

Halloween 2008

Halloween 2009

Scene: Walking back from the park. It was 75 amazing degrees in Kansas City today.

The little angel is reclined in the only stroller we still own, a purple-flowered umbrella jobby. (The park is a mile away.) She has her legs crossed and is waving the water bottle around like a wand as she warms to her subject.

Her: Mommy! I'm going to tell you a story now.

Me: Okay.

Her: This is the story of the three pigs.

Me: (respectful pause)

Her: The first pig was named <LITTLE ANGEL>. 

Me: She sounds very nice.

Her: Shhh! This pig built a house out of FEATHERS. Can you believe it?

Me: That would be hard to do.

Her: And then a wolf came along and blew the house over. Can you believe it?

Me: That's too bad. Then what happened?

Her: Then the SECOND PIG, whose name was AUNT STEPHI, came and built a house out of DIAMONDS.

Me: (choking with laughter) That sounds right.

Her: But the wolf came and blew over the diamonds. And Aunt Stephi ran away.

Me: Excellent. Then what happened?

Her: Then the last pig came, and her name was RITA. And she was the SMARTEST PIG OF ALL.

Me: Of course she was!

Her: And she built her house out of BRICKS.

Me: And could the wolf blow it down?

Her: NO. So the other pigs came to live with her.

Me: Did she build them rooms of diamonds?

Her: Yes, of course she did. Seriously, Mommy.

Me: Excellent story, dear.

Her: And then there is this other story about THREE MICE.

And so it continued, all the way home.

Over dinner, she told the story to Beloved, who also appreciated its sparkling humor. Then she sang a song.

Her: This is not a real song.

Me: Why not?

Her: Because I just made it up.

Me: That's why you need to write it down. Because as soon as you write something original down, it becomes real.

Beloved nodded.

Me: It's called COPYRIGHT LAW.

Her: That is so cool!

Me: It doesn't mean it's good, but at least it's real.

Her: I can't believe I made up something real.

Isn't writing great?

I got a new freelance gig! For the next six months, I'm going to be a contract project editor for a new experiment in citizen journalism at BlogHer. The topic? Parenting in a digital world. Here's my intro post, cross-posted from BlogHer.

You've seen the talk shows and heard the playgroup buzz: What theheck are we doing about the influence of social media, cell phones,games and other technology on our little angels?

Fear not! We're here to help! Over the next sixmonths, BlogHer is taking on a groundbreaking experiment in citizenjournalism with regard to parenting in the digital age. Our digitalparenting ambassadors will post analysis of breaking stories, trends,and the activities of BlogHer moms from a variety of angles. Inaddition, the ambassadors will blog insightful personal posts that shedlight on their own parenting within the matrix. We'll be rolling outessays, technology round-ups and general navel-gazing.

We'llcover geeky parenting, technology as it's embedded in our daily lives(as parents and as participants in the community), tech trendspotting,parenting headaches and triumphs caused by our devices and the socialmedia sphere, and the same great parenting writing you're used toseeing here. Parenting, after all, is still parenting, whether or notyou're doing it with your Blackberry attached.

I know I'm excited-- I've been a BlogHer Mommy & Family contributing editor for morethan three years now, and this topic has come up so many times for mepersonally. I'm thrilled to be working with the talented group ofwriters who'll be bringing you this important information.

In addition, BlogHer will host a Family Connections BlogHer groupto which all our digital parenting posts will be published. The easiestway to stay in the loop is to join the group. So what are you doing?Click on over and join!

We can't wait to hear your thoughts. Thisis a conversation, and we want to hear from YOU -- be your own beatreporter covering the ups and downs of parenting your cyberific kids.With my own daughter in kindergarten, I need your help navigating thedark waters. Come along for the ride, my friends.

So, if this topic interests you, join the Family Connections BlogHer group, and you'll get everything pushed to you. So easy. So digital-like.

And if it doesn't, it won't live here, so no worries.

Tonight is the little angel's dance recital. She doesn't even have to be there until 7:45 p.m.  Her bedtime is 8:30.  This will be interesting.  Also? The dress rehearsal is at 10:30 a.m.  Again with all the events during working hours?  WTF?

I'm really excited for her, but also nervous. Will she actually walk out on stage, or will she freak out?  Will she be okay backstage without me?  (If you wanted to be a "stage mom", you have to attend a mandatory meeting today, again during work hours.) Will she like it?  Will she remember her little dance?  Will we be able to get her back up there tomorrow for another two performances?

This morning she was so excited she crawled into bed with us at 6:30 and proceeded to spend the next half hour elbowing me out of the way, demanding her own pillow, stealing all the covers and telling me she didn't like my morning breath.  She has interesting ways of reaching out for support.  And I, in return, respond by trying to squeeze her to death as she attempts to wriggle out of my arms. 

This morning I have to take the little angel to the doctor to see if her ear infection is gone.  I'm trying to get some work done before we go, as I know going to a pediatrician's office is never, um, quick.

I put in a DVD we made of our home movies.  We've just watched the little angel's second birthday party, and now we're on Easter 2006.  The little angel has crawled up on the back of the couch and has her cold little feet on my neck.  I'm thinking it's the next cool think in European spas.

So I was talking to one of the other moms at ballet class last night about having to take my daughter to the doctor this morning.  One of the dads asked if we were going to be at pictures, which are on Friday at 2:15.  I muttered that at 2:15 I would be at work downtown, then I went to get the two complimentary tickets to the three recitals ($12 per ticket, even parents have to buy a ticket, grrr).  When I came back, the other mom was looking at me expectantly.

"You can say no if you want," she said, "but I'd be happy to pick up your daughter from daycare and take her to pictures. She can come and play with I. afterwards at our house until you can pick her up."

I paused to try to wrap my head around the idea that this woman was willing to take all that on.  I mean, we've been talking every week for the past two months, and our girls are friends.  I. even took the little angel's hand when she was scared about performing last weekend and led her out on stage.  But still, what a lot of work!  What a nice thing!  I paused.

"Like I said, if you're not comfortable..." she trailed off.  I thought about how much she'd put herself out there to suggest it, for no reason at all other than kindness.  So I decided to take her up on it.

"I think that's the sweetest gesture.  I'd love it if you could.  I hope I can return the favor someday," I said, blushing.

"I think it's pretty unfair how they have everything during the workday," she said. 

I'm trying to accept help when it drops out of the universe. 

This weekend the little angel's dance class performed.  We got her all gussied up in her costume, complete with hat, and hauled her down in the heat for dress rehearsal.  Her class was called up first. It was chaos in the studio, 90 degrees outside and probably 100 degrees inside, with about 100 people gathered around to watch.  The little angel dutifully followed her classmates, but on the way to the center of the wood-floor studio, she slipped in her tap shoes and fell, hard.

She got back up, but once the music started, she looked at me, her face crumpling, huge tears rolling down her cheeks.  There was an audible gasp from the crowd -- she looked that sad.  After she stood there for about ten seconds with this expression while her classmates performed, I held out my arms and my little girl ran to me, curling into the fetal position in my lap and sobbing.  She was overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed. 

After her class's rehearsal was done, I sent her over to sit with her teacher and watch how the other girls did it.  I could see her loosening up during the rest of the hour-long rehearsal, and by the time the school went outside to perform for the public, she was ready to go.  She marched out onto the stage with her little co-horts. They all forgot about half of the dance, but when you're four or five, it doesn't really matter.  She even smiled part of the time.  I thought my heart would burst.

FweetieB and her husband brought their daughter, S., to watch.  The little angel was SO EXCITED her best friend could be there to see her dance. Afterward we watched the two of them hold hands over to where they rode the little train and the ponies.  I think S. inspired the little angel to try again, and the little angel got S. on a pony.  Watching them fuel each other's self-confidence was touching, and so was knowing the little angel has such good friends, and friends with parents who will make sacrifices to come and see us way out in the suburbs.  We so appreciate that, and I know no matter what happens to the little angel in her life, she will always benefit from learning to be a good friend and having others be a good friend to her from the tender age of one or two.

It does something to you, when you have good friends. It makes it easier to get up on stage or on a pony or into a new job or city or college or whatever you're trying to achieve.  Good friends give you courage the way nothing else in life can.  Knowing you have people who will still love you if you fail often guarantees YOU WILL NOT FAIL.
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Winner of the Picture Perfect and Mia Software contests up at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.