And Here I Thought Grama Was a Responsible Babysittier

Clearly she's confused my baby with the mountains of dirty laundry she must have found around my house the week she watched the kids.

This was a sweet surprise I just found on the computer. I must have been mid Caribbean isle the day these two best buddies - Grama Claudia and Rachel - snapped this. At the time, I would have traded places, I missed the kids so much.

But now, with Cranky Pants Muldrow Jr. waking up every 10 in other room - I'm thinking, I'll take the isle.

Well Let's Just See

I'm doing piles of work, Mike's scrambling in the other room to do our taxes on April 14th, and Rachel went to bed without a bottle tonight after fighting us on it for over an house.

What kind of sleep do YOU think we're going to get tonight?

And you can't say "A big pile of #$%!" no fair, cheating, that's too easy!

Answers may be:
a) Some
b) Sketchy amounts
c) Minimal, irritating to coworkers in the morning amounts
d) Tired, killing rampage tomorrow amounts

Stay tuned tomorrow for the answer!

p.s. Rachel, my little overachiever, c'mon - go for the "A"!

p.s.s. You can easily do good billing reports while watching American Idol. And yes, I DO love you, Kutey Pie Kris!

Because I Still Have Children - Photos from the last month or so

Rachel in her little black dress shirt from Grama Claudia.

Mike and Matthew at the first Spring Zoo visit.

The kids ready to tackle the Zoo.

Rachel sits up in her baths now like a big girl - and yep, she's almost always this happy and smiley these days except when she's sleeping or hungry (aka our lil piggy).

More to come ... unless I am lying and disappear for another 6 weeks, he.

YES IT'S REALLY ME and no I'm not ready to recap the last 6 weeks yet

Hi friends! I simply couldn't let one more minute go by without posting and catching up on my friends' blogs. So there I go to Erin's to see what I missed about her family, and see her recap of our cruise vacation together last week. But then her post about Digital Moms got me intrigued, so per Erin's suggested I surfed over to Dooce.com to see what SHE had to say about Twittering and FB'ing moms. (I was of course just waiting for the big controversial oh, moms neglect their kids or oh, moms risk their kids privacy stuff ... and was waiting to see if I had a violent reaction to it, one way or another).

And then I did NOT read that article, but instead got sucked into one of Heather's (many) side advertisements, specifically, this video from the Momversations.com website. The topic? Family dinners.

Now I'm thinking: (a) what do I care about family dinners? (b) what does Miss Heather (who talks politics and depression and "deep stuff") Armstrong care about family dinners and (c) gee the digital mommy advertising revolution really has sort of, well, Madison-avenued out the best and most sincere of us. Momversations? Please.

But then I actually really enjoyed it. I learned of several new mommy bloggers that I might start following - seemingly smart and funny women I wouldn't have known about except for this dumb "ad." (Giyen and Mindy - anyone read 'em?)

I also mostly appreciated seeing how a seemingly commercialized Heather ... agreeing to do this sponsored link (yes I sat through the full 30 second opening of a Target pitch) looked completely uncomfortable and nervous being shot on video. It was sort of reassuring that even as marketers tap bloggers and leverage them for their own purposes, and moms vie to make some money from it (hey more power to ya), real people are still real people ... yes you can use me for it but I can't complete change who I am. Anyway, that's my deep interpretation of a 3 minute web video.

It als reminded me how much I've missed the interweb these last 6? 7? 8? weeks of intense work and lack of life balance. I am enjoying a beautiful sunny Spring Saturday morning view out my back window, drinking my coffee, posting my random and inconsequential thoughts, and catching up on those from my friends - and complete strangers, of course! - from the last month and a half. And just thinking ahhhh ... I'm home.

Next up: a real update on my life.