Resolving not to resolve but to make goals

So I had this whole big plan to resolve not to make resolutions this year, but then someone on Twitter pointed out that that was a conundrum in and of itself because clearly you can't resolve not to resolve as that defeats the purpose.

The reason I didn't want to make resolutions is that they bug me. On January 1st you wake up all bushy tailed and happy to get the year started right. And then by noonish you've given up on the diet resolution, by the third day you've stopped exercising, and by the fifth you're back exactly where you started.

And really if something is worth making resolutions over, why would you wait until January 1st to do it? Why not do it right away?

Instead it seems like January first should be a day for setting goals for the coming year. Goals, not resolutions. It's a fine distinction, granted, but it just seems more manageable. And less time sensitive. At least I won't have to get them all done Friday while fighting a hangover.

My goals for 2010 are simple really. Simple in character, challenging in execution. Lofty to say the least. But I've chosen to aim for the stars so that I might land on the moon.

1) I want to sell an article to a national magazine. You know, before they all fold. I'm not picky, I'll take a national parenting magazine or a women's magazine. It could be short or long, whichever, again, I'm not picky.

2) I want to sell my novel. First I need to finish editing and find an agent. But I really want to get moving on  the next part of this particular journey.

3) I want to start on the next novel. I have two in mind and I'm leaning more towards one than the other, but I need to toy with both a bit before committing myself to either. That said, I can't wait to get cracking.

4) I want to take better care of myself - physically, mentally, and possibly even spiritually. Which might sound like a resolution, but I refuse to consider it as one. Let's just consider this another step in the right direction.

5) I want to play more with the girls and with M. Or at least have more meaningful moments with them, both as a family and individually. Sometimes it seems insurmountable to take five minutes for a heart to heart or a simple cuddle, but the effects can be felt for days and I just need to make the time. It needs to become a priority rather than something that fills the downtime.

Simple, right?

I better get started.

Happy New Year my friends. May this year see all of your most precious goals realized. 

Wordless Wednesday: Self Encouragement

"You can do it. Come on. Twy again."*

*I wrapped a rubber band around my phone. Little L slipped it off and tried to put it back on, muttering encouragements to herself all along. Just the way I encourage her when she tries something hard. Guess she's hearing me...

Celebrity Sighting at the Newport Aquarium

I usually spend my evenings on my couch with my laptop on my lap (duh) and my TV to my right. I don't really watch TV, it's more that I listen to it and glance up every so often when something catches my attention. Which is why I watch a ton of reruns. They're less distracting.

My favorite show to watch reruns of?

Ace of Cakes.

I find them funny and I love drooling over the cakes. So shoot me.

Anyway, to cut short my pathetic rambling about late night TV reruns, I shall get to the point of this whole post.

One day at Charm City Cakes (Bakery where Ace of Cakes is filmed) they made a cake of a Shark Ray for the Newport Aquarium. It was cool. Both the cake and the episode.

Today we went to the Newport Aquarium. Who knew it was in Kentucky, a mere 2.5 hours drive away from my sister's house?

And here's the sad thing.

I recognized Sweet Pea right away.

Oh yes, I am that talented. I can recognize real animals based on their cake counterparts. I rawk.

Of course she was shy and I never managed to get a picture of her. But I did snag some other cool shots as the kids dashed from one aquarium to another. We had a blast. It would have been cool even without meeting a fishy celebrity. But that was pretty cool too.

Here's what she looked like in cake form!

Whatcha lookin' at?

This guy did not get the "Fish are friends not food" memo.

Couldn't take my eyes off this beauty.

She was stunning and graceful and huge.

He was also huge. But not stunning or graceful.

Though he did do an impressive mud blob impression.

Teeny tiny cutie frog.

Then Little L touched a shark. Kinda.

And we weighed them on a shark scale.

They didn't measure up to that bad boy up there.

Especially not this one.

Fabulous aquarium. Highly recommend it next time you're in the Cincinnati, KY area.

A snowy after-Christmas

When we arrived in Ohio last Sunday morning, the world was covered in a thin white film of fine powdery snow. A cheery snowman greeted us from the front lawn and we smiled at the novelty of it all. It was a balmy 50 F when we left San Francisco the night before.

But our dreams of a white Christmas were foiled by a ton of rain that fell on the county on Christmas eve. I thought for sure that we were done with the snow, that the girls would have to wait for another trip to Tahoe to try their hands at building a snowman or sledding again.

I was wrong. I took this picture five minutes ago, moments before heading to bed. The world is once again blanketed in soft while snow and tomorrow morning I sense that there's going to be much gleeful snowball throwing and snowman building.

Stay tuned for pictures! The only bummer is that M took off thirty minutes after the snow started to fall. Instead of playing in the cold with us tomorrow he'll be heading back to work. Poor M.

Waiting anxiously to unplug

Knowing that I was heading out state for two weeks to spend the holidays with my sister, her family, my other sister, and my mother, I busted my butt to get as much work done as possible so I could sit back, shut down the computer, and relax for a good long stretch of time.

Of course even the best laid plans often go awry and this one was no exception.

Instead of a project being nicely wrapped up just before our departure it all blew up as we were taking off and I have been struggling to collect all the pieces and patch it back together ever since. Not an easy feat in between the quality family time and the time difference. The fact that I'm bitter and resentful about the whole thing and bringing a terrible attitude to the table about it isn't helping either.

In theory the whole shebang should be put to rest tonight, finally allowing me to shut down the computer for a few days. If all works out I'll just pop back here to post an obligatory Christmas Morning snap shot or two, but aside from that I'll be gloriously computer free for four days.

And frankly?

I can't wait.

Edited to add: The deadline I was scrambling to meet last night was moved to Monday. Without anyone telling me. The frustration and irritation I feel about that knows no bounds. Would have been nice to know that three days ago when the decision was made.

Fun with Cousins

One of the greatest things about traveling cross country to spend time with my sister and her family is that the girls get to spend some time with their cousins.

The instant we walked in C ran off to play. It was like we had seen them just last week, not six months ago. And for once Little L is able to keep up with the "big kids" which means that this really is quite a relaxing vacation for us. The kids entertain each other, leaving us to enjoy time with the grown-ups, read, work, or just hang out.
Periodically a child will wander through the main living area, gather a kiss and a cookie, and meander off again. They're happy, they're entertained, and they're forging those priceless family memories that will remain with them forever.

No Little L in this shot.

She was already bored with the whole picture taking thing and had wandered off.

Gearing up for Christmas

Now that we've put the trip behind us we can to focus on the truly important stuff... family and Christmas!

The cousins have been gathered.

Though it's a bit challenging to get them all to focus on the camera at the same time.

The elf is keeping everyone on their toes.

Rudolf has made it onto the tree.

The tree is all ready.

And UPS has been by... a few times.

Let the holiday begin!

Hello OHIO!

Have you ever tried getting a full night's sleep on a four hour cross country flight with a wriggly toddler sitting on your lap?

I don't recommend it.

It's not the most restful thing in the world. Especially when the airplane air vent thing is blowing in your face, but you can't reach it because the toddler has finally fallen asleep and you don't want to wake her up because god forbid she might not go back to sleep.

Miraculously we all did finally doze off, Little L instantly becoming a dead weight that threatened to fall into the aisle every time my grip on her body relaxed, C curled up on the seat between M and I, resting her head on her daddy's lap. And M and I did our best to get comfortable in the cramped space.

About a minute after taking off we arrived in Cincinnati, covered in snow, a world away from the sunny unseasonal warmth we had just left back in California. The rental company pointed us to our car in the lot and left us to figure out how to clear the snow covering it. M and I looked at each other over the mounds of snow, flashing back to our time together in Boston.

No snow to clear off cars. Another reason to love living in California.

But then we drove to my sister's house where we were greeted by said sister, her kids, and my other sister. We ate fresh croissants and bagels, chatted over coffee, and let the tired fall away. The snow kept falling outside, but inside, where there was no airplane vent, wriggly toddler, or snow to clear off anything, it was easy to forget how far we had to come to get here.

Lights, love, and books

Two years after I started our first family holiday tradition I am holding firm and starting to reap the benefits of what I sowed. Instead of heaping more toys on two girls who are about to receive a heap of things on Christmas morning, we're still giving books for Hanukah.

I love this tradition that we're sticking to. We gather in the kitchen or the dining room and light the candles. This year C's sweet voice is joining ours as we sing the traditional blessings and Little L interjects a word or a phrase wherever she can. Then, to the light of the menorah, the girls pounce on their one wrapped book. One book, two girls, and they have been amazing about opening it together. (I've been using the same wrapping paper every night. It's like the Hanukah miracle all over again. I'm hoping it lasts all eight nights.)

They scramble to the couch, new book in hand, and we all sit together to read it.

It's fun, it's cozy, and I love that it's about the moment and not the stuff.

Happy Hanukah to everyone who is celebrating this week. May your latkes always be crispy and your candles burn bright.

Editing struggles

In the middle of everything I'm dealing with, there is a book. It calls to me from inside the computer. It wants me to pay attention to it, fix what's wrong with it, brush up what's almost there, and acknowledge what's good.

I want so badly to just sit down and work on my novel. I'm itching to act on the feedback that I have received from my alpha readers. And it's fun to get back into it. I love writing fiction. I love spending time with my characters in the story I crafted. I love discovering a plot point that had escaped me the first time around. I love tightening sentences, perfecting descriptions, and taking care of everything else that catches my eye as I read. It's the same high I used to feel when I was writing the thing in the first place.

But at the same time I just want to be done with it.

I still deal with the constant tug between paid work and working on the novel. I have a limited amount of time to write and sadly the paid stuff tends to take precedence. If I could just be done with the book and start shopping it around it could suddenly flip from being my pipe dream hobby to an actual potential source of income. I'd have the luxury of setting aside two or three hours to work on a new novel without feeling guilty about using my time frivolously.

As much as I want to call "good enough!" I'm not there yet. Every time I open the file and dive into the story I find a hundred little things that need to be tweaked and reworked. Today I even discovered a major plot change that needed to be hammered out.

It's not impossible that I could send out a query tomorrow and get a few nibbles. I could even get some people to ask to see the full manuscript. But I'd know that the book wasn't as good as it could be. I'd know I hadn't given it all the attention and time that it deserved.

So, for the time being, I shall ignore the voices in my head that are screaming that income is the only thing that shows whether something has been worthwhile and I shall try to find some time every day to devote to this book. Because, the day that it's printed and sold, what's going to make me smile isn't the money in the bank, it's knowing that people are reading my story and loving it. And on that day I want to know that they're reading my best work, not my "good enough" work.

Support is support no matter where it comes from

Yesterday a 2-year-old boy fell int a pool and drowned and, if that weren't tragic enough, today insensitive people attacked the poor child's mother, accusing her of faking her son's death for attention.

The basis for their attack?

She tweeted that he had drowned.

That's right. Her crime was that, as the paramedics were trying to revive her baby, she tweeted asking people to pray for her son.

Apparently some people, even heavy twitter users, cannot fathom that, faced with a personal tragedy, someone would hop online and share it with their followers.

It infuriated me that people would make the blanket assumption that the fact that she was even online meant that she wasn't really grieving, was in fact faking.

Now I'm sorry, you might hate Twitter and Facebook and all that they stand for. That's your prerogative. But you can't ignore the fact that some people have a real network of friends online. People they turn to to share their joys and their frustrations. And yes, people they turn to for support in times of great tragedy.

Shocking as it may seem, for many people Twitter and Facebook offer a real support network, far beyond what most people can imagine. Being a mom is an isolating job. You can't always go out and meet up with people to get the grown-up interaction you crave. You're often at the mercy of tiny little irrational dictators. This is even more true for moms who live in rural areas. So we turn to the Internet and to social networks to vent or share our triumphs, we joke with a mom we've met here or there, and slowly real friendships develop. Because the mom on the other side of the computer is living a parallel life she understands that you might pop in and out of the conversation. And because she's always there, it's easy to talk to her and update her in snippets.

That's why, when something happens and we need emotional support, we turn to our online friends. They're there. They're accessible. And they are amazing when it comes to the instant support that a terrible tragedy calls for. Tweeting out that something bad has happened - a car accident, an injury, anything - and getting a slew of supportive responses makes you feel less alone. It makes it less scary to pull your shoulders back and deal with the situation. Simply knowing that others, even people who have never met you in person, are thinking of you as you struggle makes it possible to go on.

Just because it's virtual support doesn't make it less real. The invisible hands holding you up are just as tangible as real hands. And that's why mothers who have lost their child in the most tragic way imaginable might come tell their followers. Not because they don't care. But because they need their friends.

Stress level scarlet

It is 11:42 and instead of getting ready for bed I am
- editing Parenting on the Peninsula articles that I should have edited two days ago.
- thinking up blog posts for the Tiny Prints blog.
- wondering if the kids have any clean clothes for tomorrow.
- wondering if I have any clean clothes for tomorrow.
- worrying about a deadline that I didn't meet today.
- trying to think ahead to our trip on Saturday so that I get everything ready before we leave.
- trying to remember everything that needs to be done before we leave Saturday.
- worrying about all the Christmas shopping that I haven't done.
- worrying about the book that I haven't yet read. (Sorry Genevieve!)
- worrying about the fact that I haven't lost any weight in the last few months. Instead I have gained some.
- eating some rice pudding.
- worrying about the car that is starting to show signs of imminent demise.
- scratching my rash. (Soon none of this will matter because I shall be a lizard. Yay me.)
- agonizing over the housing/move situation
- agonizing over the school situation
- agonizing over the money situation.
- wondering when I'll ever find the time to start finish the edits for my novel.
- feeling sad for yet another blogging/twitter mother who lost her 2-year-old son today.

He was Little L's age. And just as full of life and fun as she is. Thinking of him and his mother tonight should make everything else just fade into perspective, but it's really just bringing it further into the light. I hate being tortured by these piddly worries when there are huge big monster issues that people are dealing with. I want to just focus on the fact that my kids and my husband are healthy and sleeping soundly close by. But that's not getting the articles edited, or the suitcases packed. It's not getting the presents ordered, or the blog posts written.

I want to stop and weep for this mom and dad who have lost their son. I want to wail and scream that the world is unfair and that babies should never die, but I also want to just get my stuff done so I can finally get some sleep so I can deal with tomorrow which will be just as busy and crazy as today. And I feel terrible guilt that I'm too stressed to give this poor baby the attention and grief that he deserves.

And if that isn't messed up, I really don't know what is.

A final stab at organized living

When we moved into this house almost 7 years ago it was just M and me. Well, M, me, and the cat. The place was so big that we didn't have enough furniture to fill all the rooms. Our dining room remained empty for years.

Then we had a first kid. And she came with all the usual stuff kids come with - swing, bassinet, bouncy seats, high chairs, toys, toys, and more toys. All of a sudden we started filling the space. Only M and I aren't the most organized at the best of times, and, well, as any new parent knows, that first year of parenthood is many things, but it's not the best or times, nor the most organized of times.

So stuff got piled in corners, shoved in tight spaces, and lined up against the walls.

Then we had another child and the chaos grew even more out of control. We got more furniture, more baby stuff, more books, more toys. The barely controlled mess grew out of control.

In the past couple of months we've made a conscious effort to organize the house. We've bought a storage system for the toys, we've culled clutter here and there. And today I finally did something I should have done years ago: I cleaned my things off the shelves in the girls' room so they would have more room for their stuff.

I packed up books and memorabilia from my pre-baby life and I replaced them with stuffed animals, Little People planes, Weeble Wobble houses, and a million other little toys. When I tucked them in tonight I looked around and for once their room really looked like a kid's room, not a pastel painted room where kids had been placed while we waited to figure out where to put them for real.

And the motivation for all this cleaning?

Today we visited our second open house. We're quickly getting on board for a possible move and we badly need to get organized in case we find the perfect house and need to start packing.

As ironic as it may be that we'll finally get the house organized just in time to have to pack it up and leave, I'm hopeful that it'll also give me a better idea of how to start off better organized no matter what new home we end up in.

A girl can dream, right?

Administrative postity post (aka dealing with the IE issue)

Just a few quick things then we'll go back to our usual literary brilliance. Heh.

1) If you usually read this blog in Internet Explorer, I'm sorry. I had heard rumors that there were issues opening posts, but I hadn't been able to replicate the problem on this end. I have now replicated the problem and I am baffled. I emailed Karen of the awesome blog design to see if she might have some insight as to how I might have broken the blog. Let's all hope she can fix it. (Or say, one of you super smart, super savvy people can help. Anyone? Ben? Anyone?)*
In the meantime can I entreat you to try Firefox maybe? Or Chrome? I love the former and I've heard great things about the latter. I promise to post an update when we're back on track.


2) If you happen to be on Facebook and you're in any way interested in the novel I have been writing, I'd love it if you would join the Facebook Fan Page I created last week. As you know, I'm on a quest to publish my first novel. One day it will be my author fan page. In the meantime it's all about my journey to get there!

Writing a book is like raising a child. I'm going to need my village to help me to get it off the ground.

Also, I might post tiny snippets from the novel here and there. Fun!

3) I have been nominated for a couple blog awards. I would be honored and touched if you might vote for me. I'm putting the buttons right here for your voting convenience! (Thank you. Really. It means a lot to me. And I'm not saying that because you're pretty.)







*Edited to add: Well, dagnabit. It's not a problem with just my blog. It's a well known issue with Internet Explorer. I'm going to have to play a bit with the sidebar items to see if I can fix it. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. The blog does open correctly in all other browsers...

The tragedy of the stolen Snuggie

You know the Snuggie. Oh yes you do. That blanket with sleeves that everyone loves to hate. There are so many parodies of the infomercial on YouTube that I was hard pressed to pick just one to share with you.

The Snuggie is that one thing that absolutely no one is putting on their wishlist this year, no one is admitting they want, and no one is buying.

And yet, tonight, at the TinyPrints marketing team's white elephant holiday party everyone's eyes shone brightly when I opened up my gift and found a leopard skin Snuggie.

I joked about how awesome it was, but I was thinking about my freezing house and easily imagining myself wrapped in the Snuggie's fleece while working on my computer. It wasn't hard to do.

We have a 1930s home with 1930s windows. They all leak cold air to a certain extent. And we have one central heating vent. Not central air. One central air vent. As in, it's central to the house. In the livingroom. You are basically warm if you stand over it. And since that's usually where M stands, you'd have to fight him for it.

Even though the couch is all of a foot away from the vent my feet and hand still freeze when I sit on it. By the time I shut down for the night my toes are numb with cold. A Snuggie would be a perfect.

The very next person to pick a present after me stole my Snuggie. The person after that chose an unwrapped gift. And then the Snuggie changed hands again. Twice.

That's right. The Snuggie, product that no one wants to admit they want, changed hands three times tonight, more than any other gift. And every time it changed hands my toes got a little colder.

But you know, it's OK. The Snuggie isn't cool, in fact it's the opposite of cool. Everyone knows that, even Ellen.

Because they give meaning to our lives

I haven't mentioned it much, but the Kindergarten situation is still very much in the forefront of my mind as I go about my busy days. We have not found the perfect school for C, nor do we have much of an idea about how we're going to go about finding said school. It's actually much more of an issue now than it was back in September when I first blogged about the issue.

We met with the preschool director last Thursday in the hopes that she might have some helpful insights for us. She's an amazing woman with years and years of experience. She's been in the area for a long time and she knows most of the schools in the vicinity. Plus, by now she knows C pretty well so we figured she wouldn't steer us in the wrong direction.

In the end though she didn't tell us anything we didn't know. The public school we are zoned to really is sub-par. The private schools that would work for us are insanely expensive. Parochial school is not a good choice for us. And if we're going to sink a ton of cash into tuition we might as well move to a better school district and put the money towards a mortgage.

We started looking at home listings this past weekend and realized that to move to a better school district we would have to pay more for a similarly sized or smaller house. Which we knew, but hadn't really admitted until we traipsed through an open house late Sunday.

The place had one more bedroom than our current home, but was smaller by a good 600sq feet and had no yard. The bedrooms were tiny. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were essentially one small room that could have easily fit into our current living room. It was classy, cute, and compact. It would have been perfect for us before we had kids.

"Why..." M started, eying the two little devils that were trying hard to destroy the zen decor of the model home.

"Because they give meaning to our lives." I replied quickly to squelch the thought that was forming. "More so than any of the romantic dinners we used to have, or long walks along the Seine, last minute getaways to exotic locations, artsy movies..." I trailed off and watched C and Little L fight over a potentially fragile ornament they had snagged from a side table. "They give meaning to our lives. Some days it's just harder than others to remember what that meaning might be."

The man at Starbucks

He arrives an hour or so after I have set up shop at my favorite corner table. He walks in, looks around for an open table, and heads over to it. His Sudoku puzzle of the day and book are clutched in his left hand. He prints those puzzles out every morning. No newspaper cut-out for this aficionado. I like that kind of dedication to rituals.

When we first noticed each other months ago - the only two morning regulars at this particular Starbucks - we barely acknowledged each other. After a few mornings spent working at neighboring tables we started nodding a brief greeting. Today as he surveys the line at the counter our eyes meet and we smile at each other conspiratorially. I've been keeping an eye on his favorite table, hoping it would still be open when he arrived. Hoping he would arrive. I haven't seen him in a few days and I've been worried.

He came in right on time today and I smiled a bit brighter than usual, taking him aback. I've missed my morning companion. He's wearing the fleece vest that he always wears and his forest green shirt seems familiar too. He is the constant in my ever changing days and I feel more grounded when I start the day seeing him performing his coffee and Sudoku ritual.

I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he orders his Tall Latte and frown as he pulls out a brand new iPod touch instead of his printed out puzzle. I look around on his table to see if I can spot the folded sheet of white paper, but it's nowhere to be seen.

A bit later, after some intense peering at his new gizmo, he jumps up when he sees the manager walk by. I strain to overhear their conversation. He can't get online. The technology is failing him. I force myself to bite back a snort and keep my eyes focused on the computer screen.

Ten to one says that tomorrow he's back, green shirt, black vest, wire rimmed glasses, and a printed out puzzle clutched in his hand. You can't mess with morning rituals.

This post was written in response to the second {W}rite-of-Passage prompt - Character. I'm a bit of a rebel (and terrible at reading instructions) so instead of observing a stranger and building a story around him, I plucked one out of my day to day life and shared him with you. Visit the following posts to see how other writers tangled with this topic. Join us if you want some writing challenges!

Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind - an SV Moms Book Club post

I walked into the classroom hesitantly, eying the semi circle of small desks warily. In my classroom the tables were bunched together in tiny groups of three, this was different, not what I had expected.

Then again, nothing in the class was as I had expected. This room was much cheerier than my classroom. There was more light, more bright decorations on the wall, even the children seemed much happier.

The teacher interrupted my visual exploration of her room by gently guiding me to a vacant desk in the middle of the semi-circle. That was different too, my regular teacher would have just barked at me from her desk. I sat down and stared hard at the desktop. Then the girl sitting next to me leaned over and whispered a quiet hi. And the boy on the other side leaned in an hissed at me.

"That's my friend Matt's desk. He's sick. Don't take anything, he'll know."

He leaned away and the friendly girl just shrugged. I tucked my hands between my thighs and tried not to touch anything on Matt's desk.

The day continued much like that, I was a visitor in a cheerful, welcoming classroom, but a visitor nonetheless. I hated my current school, my class governed by mean girls who had assigned me a best friend who didn't much like me, or me her for that matter. My crazy, bitter teacher, who barked at us more than she taught us. And the sheer size of the school - huge and bewildering to a kid who was not only trying to learn to be an American girl, but who was also trying to learn the language.

My visit to this new school was a step towards getting me transferred from the bigger public school to the cozier and friendlier public school. And it was great. I loved that little school with its little playground and gentle teachers. I loved the kids there. Yes, even the infamous Matt who ended up in my class the following year and never let me live down the fact that a pencil vanished from his desk the day that I visited.

I was only at that school for two years before my family packed up and moved to another country. I went on to attend two other radically different schools before going on to college. I'd almost forgotten the joy of that small classroom until I picked up Phillip Done's book Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind. It's an at times hilarious, at times moving, account of his days as a teacher to a third grade class right here in the San Francisco Bay Area.It took me right back.

It's clear from this book that Done would have been the kind of teacher who would have been right at home at that little school that I so loved. And now I'm looking into seeing where Phillip Done teaches, because I would be thrilled for my kids to experience the kind of warm inspiring classroom environment that he has created.

This post was written in honor of this month's Silicon Valley Moms Blog book club and the inspiring book that we just read: Philippe Done's Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind. I was sent this book from the publisher for review purposes. The opinions about it and stories that it has inspired are all mine.

The next step is a really big one

I ended up sending the book to four people and handing it to M right here at home. Three are still reading it, but M and one of the readers have finished it.

Both of them have declared it to be fantastic. And I'm not allowed to throw it under the bed and never talk about it again.

Gulp.

Both of them agreed on the aspects that need to be tweaked, and since they are both very different people, with very different points of views and centers of interests they must be on to something.

Which is all fine and dandy... but did I mention GULP.

Because now I have to take the next step, and that next step is huge.

Instead of putting the book in a nice and tight little box and hiding it under the bed next to the much bigger box that houses my wedding gown, I'm going to have to open the computer file and, starting on page 1, I'm going to have to start fixing up the weak spots. 

While I wrote the first draft and did my first read through I was constantly plagued with horrible crippling doubt and I comforted myself with the notion that a first book is supposed to be bad. It didn't matter if things didn't quire work. I could just type END and hide it away forever. One day I'd even laugh about that terrible first novel.

But they liked it. Apparently it's really good. And so now I get to go back and make it even better, without that safety net protecting me from the evil voices in my head.

Wish me luck. It might be a bumpy road.

From the Mouths of Babes: A little thankfulness

On the way up to Tahoe to celebrate Thanksgiving I pondered how I could start getting the girls to understand the gist of the holiday. It's hard to explain gratitude of that amplitude to young children. I can get them to say thank you and please, but gratitude for the great things in life... that's much harder.

I finally boiled it down to the bare essence of the notion and asked "What makes you really happy in your life?"

I have a feeling C was coached a bit at school, or she's just too cute, because she instantly replied that she loved her sister and her family. Little L took longer to answer. In fact she took so long that I thought she wasn't going to say anything.

Then she mumbled something around her pacifier.

I turned down the radio and asked her to repeat what she had said.

I heard the plop of the pacifier being pulled out of her mouth followed by her clear reply.

"Princess Baby. Princess Baby make me happy." Then she nodded once definitively.

It's her favorite book. We read it pretty much every night. She recites it along, points out her favorite pictures, and often requests that we call her Buttercup, Cupcake, or, obviously, Princess Baby.

I thought it was too sweet not to share, so I emailed Karen Katz, the author, to tell her about what makes my baby happy. I hope she's as moved by the story as I am.

Wordless Wednesday: The progression of a woeful tale

Cold snow + Wet hands = Sad face

 Mommy's lack of compassion = even sadder face

And a hint of the start of a tantrum.

Does she rally?

And.... no.

Poor baby.