Zeno's Bar & Grill

Yes, it’s true. Inspired by Kelly’s example, I went out and made myself an appointment with one of them there personal shoppers.

In my case, it was the shopper at Nordstrom. I went a couple of nights ago and we pretty much closed down the joint. It was very cool. I found out that I’m an “autumn” in terms of colors, and got two skirts and a bunch of tanks and a couple of little sweaters to go over that are just trendy enough, without being a dreaded…shrug (a look that maybe Kelly can pull off, but not me).

No, it didn’t break the bank. Yes, I would do it again. It was a very efficient way to shop, and since I don’t particularly enjoy shopping that’s a plus. I knew I had to do something when I wore the same shirt four days in a row a couple of weeks ago (eeeeww).

Yours in fashion,
--Melanie

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art just as bright and thy cool cashiers wear wicked Hawaiian shirts. And now that Trader Joe’s is taking Manhattan, I predict that Fashion Week for Spring 2007 will feature colorful flowered frocks.

Beyond their fashion sense, workers at Trader Joe’s are always sincerely friendly and helpful. It shows that treating workers well can be a beneficial part of corporate culture. Although the workers there are non-unionized, they make an average of $21 an hour compared with unionized grocery chains which average only $17.90.

But the proof is in the pudding, or would that be the delicious Simmer Sauces that make getting dinner on the table so much easier for a frazzled mom? I’m not sure why patrons of those new dinner assembly places like Dinner by the Dozen and Dream Dinners don’t just shop at Trader Joe’s.

One last tip for New Yorkers: Items at Trader Joe’s are like David Copperfield appearing and disappearing off the shelves with frustrating irregularity. So, if you find something you like, stock up on it.

--Kelly

Pull up a chair and pop open a Pacifico. It's time for Thirsty Thursday. Join us if you want, invite a friend, and/or come back next week when we'll have a new Special. Today’s theme…Guilt

What do you feel the most guilt about?

Melanie: There are so many things, but they probably all come under the umbrella of not spending every single minute of every single day (and night) focused on my kids. I know it’s illogical, but there it is.

Kelly: Television. It’s not like my kids watch it all day (see I’m already getting defensive), but they definitely watch their fair share.


Is there something you do that you think might (inadvertently) cause other mothers guilt even though you don’t mean to?

Melanie: I’m a reluctant perfectionist by nature and tend to do things to the nth degree—not from a spirit of competition, but just my own obsessive-compulsiveness (which I do try to curb as much as possible). So people sometimes tell me, for example, “you’re so organized” or “you get so much done”, and I guess that could make them feel guilty if they didn’t realize I’m just a helpless tool of my brain on a stick.

Kelly: I think the biggest might be my obsession with organic food. That is just my thing, and I never mean to make other moms self conscious about what they do, it is just me.


Any advice to take the guilt out of motherhood?

Melanie: Basically, be nice to each other. Forgive each other and ourselves when we make mistakes. Tell the truth about what our lives are really like, instead of trying to put up a big front.

Kelly: What Melanie says is right on. Also, try to ignore things in the media that you know are just going to cause you guilt. For instance, there was an article in Chicago Parent Magazine about a family that watches absolutely no television. I started to read, and then realized I was feeling guilty and just turned the page. (And don’t click on the link if it’s going to cause you guilt!!)

Whatever happened to the generation gap? New York Magazine details the death of the gap in an article about Grups—the new brand of adults who listen to the hippest music, wear the grungiest jeans and spend their down time snowboarding.

The good side of Grups is that they hang onto their passion—whatever it may be—rather than checking it in at the door when their kids are born. That’s cool.

What’s less cool is when it crosses the line into pre-defined ideas of what one’s passion “should” be (and how to prove it) which often seems to involve expensive products (e.g. artfully distressed Rogan jeans costing several hundred bucks a pair). It’s also not ideal to view one’s kids as moldable blank canvases to be dressed helplessly in Ramones onesies and subjected to repeated listenings of the latest from iTunes while being told that Thomas the Tank Engine “sucks” (eep! One dad quoted in the article actually said this!). This gets back to the marketing stereotypes that we blogged about a while back: some Grups would definitely be “mini-me’s” who view their kids as accessories.

Still, the children of the Grups may end up having the last laugh when they’re teenagers, since they can always turn out to be…gasp…money-grubbing Republicans.

--Melanie & Kelly

Maybe it’s my Research Assistant roots coming back, maybe it’s all the organic milk I’ve been drinking, whatever it is, once I read Melanie’s post, I couldn’t resist digging a little deeper into this 14 mph mystery.

One theory I uncovered is that the speed limit was reduced from 15 mph because people thought the drivers on the trams to the parking lots were saying fifty miles an hour was the speed limit. Oh please! Besides, what would stop the same idiots from thinking the limit was forty and not fourteen? (scroll down to the 3/19/2005 post on the hyperlink)

I discovered that the trams that take Disneyland patrons to their cars have a top speed of, you guessed it, 14 mph. So, my theory is, the speed limit of 14 mph probably makes it easy for those tram drivers to spot any Speed Racers in the parking lots.

Reporting live from Chicagoland,

--Kelly

Well, we managed to break almost every ride we tried to go on at Disneyland. Was it just coincidence that Autopia and the Steam Train got shut down (for technical reasons and a medical emergency, respectively) just as we were preparing to get on? Coincidence that Pirates of the Carribean was closed until June? I think not.

And what’s up with the 14 mile per hour speed limit in the parking lots and elsewhere once you drive onto Disney turf? Not 10. Not 15. But 14. Did they do research showing that 14 mph is safer for patrons? Did they just want to be different? I wanted to get to the bottom of this burning issue, but without organic milk on board it wasn’t gonna happen. Instead, we took the empirical approach and drove 15 mph. And nothing happened!!!!!! Something very fishy there, I’m sure.

As a grand finale, it rained on us. Buckets. We were prepared with umbrellas and felt vindicated for having lugged ‘em all over the park earlier in the day. That was the second-best part of our visit (Nothing like the feeling of being more prepared than your fellow tourists). But the best part of the day? Riding the Indiana Jones ride sans kids. Priceless. I laughed, I screamed, I almost had a heart attack. Pure Disney. But it did seem to be operating at about 16 mph. Hmmmm.

--Melanie

P.S. No, we didn’t leave the kids wandering around alone while we rode Indiana Jones. Shame on you for even thinking that. We were there with friends, of course.

Last week, the author of the blog Half Changed World started keeping track of time spent on housework as an experiment stimulated by recent articles and discussions about the amount of time spent on housework and how that affects women’s work outside the home.

This is a fascinating idea…sort of like politics, sociology and anthropology all rolled into one. Half Changed World invited others to report their own surveys, so we started to log our time, but then ran into a big, fat roadblock. Or several.

First of all, how do you tally the work? Do you count all the work that goes into running a household and family, or just the work that you do personally? It seemed to us that the point would be to keep track of everything, including work that you pay others to do in order to get a count of the “gross housework product”.

But then, how to handle the kids? Because if you have even one child under school age, then it means that child needs care essentially 24/7 (even if some of it is done by others: preschool, babysitter etc), so then why tally the laundry, dishes, cooking etc., which are just a subset of that bigger picture.

Essentially, what we concluded from this is that until your kids go to school, someone is doing a heck of a lot of child care every day, whether it’s the mom, the dad or a sitter. Does this mean that it’s really having kids that changes things so much for women career-wise, since they are more often the ones who end up staying at home or working fewer hours, while their husbands do the work outside the home?

As a corollary to all this, another way of “counting” housework is to count only the work that’s done when both parents are available, which gets to the heart of equality questions on the home front. That is, men shouldn’t be penalized for doing less housework when they’re outside the home earning money to keep the whole ship afloat.

It seems to us that the work done when both parents are available should be split 50:50 (this would be mornings, evenings and weekends for most families in which the husband and/or wife work conventional 9-5 jobs). For stay-at-home (and part-time working) moms, their work with kids and household would be considered their “day job”, and in their off time (defined by when their spouses were not working) they would have no more or less responsibility for the kids and house than their husbands.

--Melanie & Kelly

Lulu Publishing, the fastest growing print-on-demand publisher has announced their first ever Lulu Blooker Prize for the best book based on a blog. The short list has been produced and winners will be announced on April 3.

In case you haven’t heard of print on demand, it’s a publishing concept whereby users upload their content and produce books in only single copies as needed. A number of sites provide the service. Unfortunately POD publications seem to carry the stigma (whether deserved or not) of being vanity publications, too expensive or poorly edited.

--Kelly & Melanie

Yesterday there was an article in the New York Times about The Cornucopia Institute‘s report on how organic the organic milk you buy is. They ranked 65 dairies on a scale from 5 cows to zero based on criteria such as cows per acre, acreage time, and ownership structure of the farm. I was happy to note that the yogurt I buy received five cows, and the milk, four. But how much longer will I be able to get my organic milk? At Trader Joe’s there was nary a drop of organic milk to be found! The Hawaiian shirt frocked cashier told me there was a shortage and that they hadn’t received a shipment that morning and that even Whole Foods was out of organic milk! I decided to investigate. A call to my local Whole Foods revealed that they did indeed have organic milk in stock, but the person who answered the phone had to check. You’d think they would just assume as a matter of course that they had it. Hmm. I decided to do a Google search. The articles on any shortage all seemed to be from mid-2005, so I called Stoneyfield Farm’s customer service line 1-800-PRO-COWS. The nice representative there told me that in fact, there is still an organic milk shortage going on and that it takes about three years for a farm to be converted to an organic operation so the supply can’t be increased very rapidly. This leads back to the fact that we need an institute to rank the purity of our milk. I guess I must have eaten my Wheaties (with organic milk), because I certainly got to the bottom of this one. Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands.

--Kelly

We are in the midst of a total bathroom redo, and I finally figured out how to rotate the video that I stupidly took with my camera turned sideways. Sorry, folks, this one requires Quicktime.



This is how the bathroom looked last week after being gutted and having some basic prep work done. If you can’t see it, just picture bare studs and a tiny room that looks like a tenement.

Truthfully, it still looks better than the pink fixtures and flocked ‘60s wallpaper we’ve been living with for four years.

One thing we will not be including are these lovely urinals that Kelly kindly found on the web.

--Melanie

Pull up a chair and pop open a Pacifico. It's time for Thirsty Thursday. Join us if you want, invite a friend, and/or come back next week when we'll have a new Special. Today’s theme…The D Word: Discipline.

Your kids are fighting over the same toy in another room. You hear screams, accusations of “he/she took my toy” and one child comes crying to you. What do you do next?

Kelly: Unfortunately it really depends on my mood, and what millionth time this is happening for the day. Sometimes I’ll make like Solomon trying to unravel the threads of who the toy belongs to, who had it first, and why the other person took it away. If it is a favorite possession it automatically goes back to the owner. Other times I’ll just take the toy away from both of them.

Melanie: I pretty much always give the toy an automatic “time out”—typically by stashing it on top of the fridge. They often just forget all about it after a few minutes. Maybe I’m too mean, but I never try to figure out the backstory. I just take it away.

Your child is throwing a tantrum in the grocery store because he/she wants the sugar frosted cocoa bombs. He/she is yelling and everyone is looking at you. What do you do?

Kelly: Actually, knock on wood, this hasn’t happened in my six years of being a mom. Sometimes they pout a bit when I say “no”, but no full blown tantrums as of yet. I know I would stick to my guns and not give them what they asked for, but I don’t know what I would do with the child. I think it is probably one of those situations that you would just have to play by ear.

Melanie: I haven’t had this exact situation, but my kids have made plenty of noise in public when they’re displeased for one reason or another (especially my youngest for some reason). I have found that acting completely impervious nips these in the bud. It’s a little embarrassing to be pushing a cart with a screaming kid and humming as if I don’t have a care in the world, but it only lasts a minute or two.

Your child won’t put on his/her shoes and it’s almost time to leave for school. What do you do?

Kelly: Make them walk to the car in their bare feet. If shoes are still not on the feet during the drive to school, then they would go to school with bare feet. My kids have got in to the car before with no shoes, but it’s never gone any further.

Melanie: Me too! I am so glad I’m not the only crazy mom who does this. I’ve come perilously close to putting them in the car in their underwear a couple of times.

After watching the Good Morning America segment on the so-called “Mommy Wars”, I wanted to check out total 180, a magazine by and for professional women turned stay-at-home moms.

At the time it wasn’t available on newsstands, so I went to the website and signed up for a subscription. When it arrived, my first reaction was not good, as fluffy pieces on minivans and favorite TV moms seemed to fill the pages. I was also confused about their use of the acronym CHO, which is used liberally throughout the magazine but not defined until page 47. By the way, it stands for Chief Household Officers. Personally I’m not a huge fan of fake titles for being a stay-at-home mom, but I realize that is a matter of opinion.

As I read through more closely, there were more of the articles I had expected to see, like the profile of a woman who publishes moms-turned-authors and a funny article about one woman’s misadventures in the PTA. It seems to be a really inclusive magazine which I like, but the writing is kind of uneven and I’d like to see more articles on why we’ve made the choices we have and what we can do to make sure there are better choices for our daughters. So, I suppose I haven’t done a total 180, more like a 120. I’ll reserve the other 60 degrees for when the summer issue arrives.

--Kelly

The latest idea in the fight against spam is “Goodmail”, a company that wants to charge a penny per e-mail, as detailed in an opinion piece in the NY Times last week by Esther Dyson. I still like the idea of using computational “costs” as opposed to dollar and cent costs, which has been proposed by a few different people at various times. However they do it, I am looking forward to the day when spam is a thing of the past. Will such a day ever come? I must get twenty to forty spam e-mails each day in my non-Gmail account. It drives me crazy.

--Melanie

It’s all Latin jazz all the time from here on out as far as I’m concerned. We saw Eliane Elias on Saturday night and I went straight home and downloaded her most recent album from iTunes. She was gorgeous and every inch the diva in her live performance, and the piano playing and singing was superb as far as I was concerned. I’m not sure the album can live up to the concert (what album can?), but I’m still enjoying playing “Doralice” over and over again.

--Melanie

For my husband’s birthday he wanted to do something that he knew I would never want to do in a million years- go to Tony and Tina’s Wedding. We convinced another couple to go with us and even got a stretch limo for the night.

I knew we were supposed to play the guests at a crazy Italian wedding, but when we got there, it felt even more “real” than I expected, complete with a cash bar and buffet dinner of rigatoni and soggy salad served on Styrofoam plates. By the end, I felt like I really had been to a wedding. It was similar to other weddings I’ve attended where I didn’t really know the people getting married.

I was surprised by how much fun it turned out to be. I’ve even let Barry convince me to taking the kids to Medieval Times for dinner and a jousting show next time.

--Kelly

Proving once again that there’s a niche for everybody, it’s the next thing in moms groups: punkymoms. While some are indeed tattooed and pierced, their motto is inclusion. We like their mission statement, which reads in part: “Come on in and leave your judgments at the door. We just want a community of friends who maybe aren’t “only” mainstream. We want you regardless of race, religion, nationality, gender identity, ah hell, we just want you exactly as you are!” That said, you might be most comfortable with this group if you’d enjoy dressing your little one in the skull and crossbones onesie or wearing the anarchy shoelaces that are advertised in their “PunkyBay” sales forum.

Their organization started in ’02 and there are hundreds of members registered in their online forums. They sound like a lot of fun, and they’re even planning a convention in Vegas this summer.

--Melanie & Kelly

The sleeping medication Ambien has been in the news so much lately. Apparently there’s a small population of Ambien users who sleep walk, sleep eat, and even sleep drive. I first started following the stories a couple of weeks ago when the New York Times published a story that included the tale of one man who ripped out a towel bar in his bathroom while “sleeping” under the influence of Ambien. Whoa, gnarly, I thought. I’m never taking that stuff no matter how bad my insomnia gets. This was about the time I decided to maybe just quit caffeine.

Then, subsequently there have been articles about sleep-driving; including the tale of an off-duty nurse who crashed her car, resisted arrest and peed all over the intersection.

And, this week, an article about sleep-eaters, including the lady who managed to struggle into her kitchen wearing a full body cast to cook bacon and eggs. This same lady turned on her oven to 500 degrees without first removing the pots and pans stored there. Luckily her son was there to avert disaster.

Now, clearly these crazy side effects occur in only a tiny percentage of people taking Ambien, and alternatives like Lunesta do not seem to cause this kind of wacky behavior in any users. Still, I’m not signing up anytime soon.

--Melanie

What happens when a culture of naming rights (think stadiums and college bowl games) meets a culture where everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame? How about a company paying $375 dollars to name your infant for two weeks or regular joes shelling out between $54 to $139 to have stars named after themselves. Both of these examples were given in an article in the Wall Street Journal this week (Meet John ‘Your ad here’ Smith by Jeffrey Zaslow).

Reading it gave me an idea: Melanie and I are done having kids, but maybe we could consider using your name in one of our books. After all, Stephen King and John Grisham got up to $25,000 to have characters named after donors to the First Amendment Project. What do you think we could get? A cup of Starbucks maybe? Actually make mine Peet’s.

--Kelly

God help me. In the past twenty four hours, I have cleaned up after yakking kids (twice), a cat who peed on my Restoration Hardware curtains, a mysterious potty accident of unknown origin requiring sheets, pillowcases and pajamas to be washed. What’s next? I keep thinking it has to end, but it doesn’t.

--Melanie

Pull up a chair and pop open a Pacifico. It's time for Thirsty Thursday. Join us if you want, invite a friend, and/or come back next week when we'll have a new Special. This week’s theme: Preparing for Spring Break Vacations.

What was your favorite family trip?

Kelly: That is a hard one. This last trip to Palm Springs was great and so was our trip to San Francisco last year. I guess it is really any trip that doesn’t involve an overpaid mouse!

Melanie: We love going to Portland, and have done it many times. Even though my parents are moving, I expect we’ll do it a few more times. I love it up there. This year we have some more ambitious journeys planned, however. One is a train trip including the whole sleeping car experience. The other is a trip to…Italy. That one scares me a little, because of the long plane ride.

What’s your favorite way to pass the time in a plane, train, or automobile?

Kelly: It used to be nursing. I put off weaning several times because of an upcoming plane trip that I didn’t want to do without that little trick up my sleeve (er shirt). Now, it is Band-Aids. I get the fun kind with Spiderman or Hello Kitty and let the kids go town. By the time we get to our destination they look like they’ve been involved in some horrible accident, but the peace it creates is worth the looks.

Melanie: Stickers are definitely excellent. I always buy the mini Dover books that cost, like, a buck fifty. Each one has a themed set of stickers, mazes, “magic pencil” drawings, paper dolls etc. It takes one book per kid per hour to keep things under control. Plus, I have a mini DVD player that pretty much trumps everything when the situation starts to explode.


Tips for making a stay in a crowded hotel room tolerable?

Kelly: Well, if you don’t want to spend five hours in an emergency room and be scarred for life to get upgraded to a suite, then I would recommend finding a condo you can rent. Last year when we went to San Francisco, we rented a two bedroom flat with a full kitchen and great little deck. It was fantastic and the same price as a hotel!

Melanie: Let the kids build forts. We always give the closet (and sometimes more of the room) over to this activity. It makes it a little hard to find a place for our stuff, but the kids feel like they have their own space.

Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro has just been re-released on DVD. This is the most wonderful children’s movie, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you should. The New York Times’ Dave Kehr describes it as “a gentle, haunting fantasy, rooted as the best fantasy films are, in a strict psychological realism”. It’s the story of two girls who move to the country with their father to be near their ill mother, who is recuperating at a nearby hospital. They meet strange and wonderful forest creatures, and all the human characters are lovely too. The film creates a magical world that you never want to leave.

The only thing I’m not sure of is the new English dubbing using, among others, the voices of Elle and Dakota Fanning. We have an older version that is close to perfect in my opinion.

--Melanie

Good News - There is an effective vaccine that will prevent the second-leading cancer killer of women in the world – cervical cancer.

The human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease, is found in most instances of cervical cancer, which kills 3,700 women in the US each year. A new immunization appears to be 100% effective against two of the most common cancer-causing strains.

Fantastic, a cancer we don’t have to worry about our daughters getting.

Not so fast – Some conservative groups believe that the vaccine will lead to increased promiscuity in girls and are against providing it in the normal pre-pubescent immunization schedule.

Hmm, seems like a case of which is worse: The very real risk of getting cancer and dying, or the theoretical risk of increased sexual activity in girls. We can’t help but wonder; if a vaccine was created that protected against AIDS, would there be opposition to that as well?

--Kelly & Melanie

Nosy people: pay attention. Ever wondered how much your friends paid for their house? This is a question that could previously be answered only through research of the tax rolls, but now it’s suddenly, shockingly easy to find out this and much more merely by typing in the address at a site called zillow.com. It also gives an estimate (or "zestimate" as it's perkily called) of a home's current value, which can give you that happy equity-rich feeling, especially if you live in California.

In recent days, two separate people have confessed to zillowing my house. Zillowing all your friends' and relatives' homes seems to quickly be becoming a guilty pleasure or addiction of sorts. Of course, I went in to the site and reciprocated. Another neat feature is the satellite photo that accompanies the data. Along those same lines, try Google Earth, which lets you zoom in from outer space to any address you want. Seems to me that mapquest is not long for this world if you can use the Google version with its detailed and accurate pictures. I even finally got to see Kelly’s house (although I refrained from zillowing it.)

--Melanie

P.S. I predict the term zillowing will enter the mainstream vocab with astonishing rapidity: right now there are only 328 hits on Google, but wait and see.

Thirteen kids, two adults, one house. That was the scene of my son’s birthday party yesterday. I wanted to do an old-fashioned birthday party where the kids just play and kind of run around and have fun – and oh boy did they! They played basketball, and ran around our back yard and all through our house making their own fun, ignoring the games I had set up.

It seems that I miscalculated the time it would take for the kids to eat their pizza (and the amount of pizza they would eat). I ordered 4 extra-large pizzas and they scarfed down two of them in about five minutes flat. I was left with two whole pizzas and a lot of extra time to kill, so I had to cave in and put on an Electric Company DVD for 20 minutes to bring the energy level down to a Professional Wrestling Tournament instead of a Full Blown Riot.

After cake, I gave out pretty lame goody-bags. I had the kids decorate their own paper bags and then put in a strip of stickers, a pencil, and some leftover candy from a party my daughter went to on Saturday. I heard one of the kids remark on the way out, “Is there even anything in here?”

Oh well, it was a lot of fun, and a good idea in theory, but in the end it was just as much work as any other parties we’ve had. I think next year I might revert to taking the party off-site and letting someone else do the cleaning and organizing!

--Kelly

I don’t know what happened this weekend, but this little caterpillar turned into a social butterfly. We had an incredibly busy few days, starting with a slumber party with my oldest daughter’s friend on Friday night. On Saturday, I went to a silent auction for a local preschool with another friend which was a blast. I ended up “winning” a massage, a private Pilates lesson (it’s oh-so-Nikki from our book), a web design session and a meal at our favorite Italian restaurant which has been open continuously since the twenties. Oh, and I got a gorgeous bouquet of Gerber daisies on my way out.

Then that night, we hosted our neighbor for a glass of wine, then segued into a full party with Chinese takeout and six friends. Sunday was a little calmer, but my husband still managed to rent an SUV and go with a friend and all the kids to the mountains nearby to see some very unusual Southern California snow. All that and the grocery shopping, housecleaning, exercise, laundry, Sunday School and bill paying got done too, phew. I need a weekend to recuperate from my weekend.

--Melanie

I know I probably shouldn’t take this personally, but the instructor for the Mommy and Me Yoga class I take with my daughter has just resigned. There were only three more weeks left in the session, so I hope that there hasn’t been a family emergency or anything. But, because it was a small class, I can’t help but wonder if she felt the kids weren’t taking it seriously enough or something. Or maybe she thought the moms were just dragging their kids there for some cheap yoga instruction. I know I was!

--Kelly

We’ve suspected this for years, but somebody finally studied it and proved it: women are intrinsically less competitive than men. According a study by a couple of economists, even highly capable women tend to shy away from situations that put them in direct competition with others, while men (even those who are less competent) are eager to pit their skills against peers.

But everyone knows that women can be competitive in certain arenas. The researchers obviously didn’t check the playgrounds or prom dance floors. Maybe females thrive on certain types of competion, but not others. Or maybe it’s all relative, and if men were running the PTA, there’d be bloodshed.

--Melanie & Kelly

I have been blissfully caffeine free for something like three or four weeks now, and I’ve never felt better. However, recently I’m worried because there has been a disturbing trend. It started earlier this week when I added a homeopathic dose of caffeinated coffee to my cup of decaf at the coffee shop. Today, the dose was more like a third of a cup.

In my defense, I must say things have been busy around here. There are the aforementioned revisions to our book. Not to mention the total bathroom overhaul (not that I’m doing the work; just acting more or less as the general contractor—hopefully competently; we'll see whether the plumbing meshes with the clawfoot tub at the end). Also, I had a major deadline for some other work I’ve been doing (the kind I get paid for).

It hasn’t gotten so bad that I’m hiding my caffeinated joe at the bottom of the laundry basket or lying to my spouse about my drinking habit, but I’m worried. Thankfully, Kelly has offered to do an intervention if needed.

--Melanie

Pull up a chair and pop open a Pacifico. It's time for Thirsty Thursday. Join us if you want, invite a friend, and/or come back next week when we'll have a new Special. This week’s theme: Shameless Commercialism.

What’s the baby/child product you couldn’t live without?

Melanie: The extremely compact Evenflo backpack that I bought at Toys-R-Us with my first daughter. I sewed a braided trim to hide the Evenflo logo that annoyed me at the time. But I wore that backpack everywhere (but mostly in my house) when each of my kids were about 6mo-1yr of age. It’s the only way I managed to do the dishes, open mail in peace and generally save my sanity. I always, always tell new moms about The Backpack.

Kelly: Mine is close to Melanie’s, but I had the Bjorn. My youngest son was colicky and this was the only way I could get anything done.

What was your most useless baby/child purchase that gathered dust until you finally donated it to Goodwill?

Melanie: Hmmm. It seems there are so many, but I can’t think of one. I did buy a humongous side-by-side double Simo stroller once that I ended up selling on eBay.

Kelly: Again I’m with Melanie on this one. So many products, so much dust! I would have to say the co-sleeper, because I bought it for my second and I really should have known better at that point.

Where is your favorite place to shop for children’s clothes and other odds and ends?

Melanie: The internet. I find I'm developing a close, personal relationship with my UPS man, who probably thinks I am a shopaholic. What he doesn’t know is that I *never* go shopping anywhere else if I can help it (I have been known to order toilet paper from drugstore dot com). Whether it’s eBay (always NWT or NIB—you know what I’m talking about), Land’s End or boutique-y type places, if they’re online, they’re the ones for me.

Kelly: I don’t have a favorite place to shop for the kids. I just kind of buy their stuff at random places. Though, (again repeating Melanie’s answer) I did just get them some cute spring stuff from Lands End.

You know how they say in writing that you have to kill your darlings? Meaning that you have to be able to fearlessly and ruthlessly cut the parts of your work that just end up not fitting for some reason.

Well, we’ve killed a lot of darlings in the past couple of weeks. The ground around our desks is littered with corpses.

We're in the midst of a major revision that gets to the heart of the story a lot faster…like in the first sentence. We had to cut some things, switch others to flashbacks and add entire chapters later in the story when things really heat up and start moving quickly. It’s been fun, exhilarating and given us (and our book) a new lease on life. It goes back to our agent at the end of the week, and we’ll see if she likes all the dead darlings too.

--Melanie & Kelly

We’ve all heard how bad TV is for our kids, and received the snarky lectures over the damage it can do to their precious growing brains.

But pick up your remote and do a cheer, one damning piece of evidence has fallen by the wayside. Two new studies suggest no link between television exposure and ADD. This is in contrast to an earlier study that suggested even one extra hour of TV a day was enough to increase risk of developing concentration problems by 10%.

All parents can now breathe a sigh of relief and stop lying awake at night feeling guilty over Elmo.

--Melanie & Kelly

I was so excited to watch the Oscars last night. I had spent the whole weekend working and was in the mood to veg out and relax. I popped my popcorn, found the remote, curled up on the couch with my husband and turned on the TV…just in time to see Jon Stewart bidding everyone farewell.

I’m not a big TV watcher, and I assumed it would start around eight o’clock. Isn’t that prime time? Of course, later I realized that they probably have to show it earlier for the east coast.

I guess I’ll have to wait until next year.

--Melanie

Winning the award in most adorable scientific research is the recent study that found babies are inherently altruistic. The descriptions of how the little toddlers would unfailingly offer a helping hand when the researcher got into a sticky wicket was absolutely heart warming. Why does this trait seem to disappear in some people when they grow out of their Huggies?

--Melanie

As a kid my favorite of all the PBS offerings was Electric Company, but I couldn’t really remember any specifics. So when I saw on Half Changed World that it was being released on DVD I had to have it. Yesterday it finally came and I watched it with my kids. I was surprised at the low production values, which I guess I didn’t notice as a kid, but we loved it anyway! It is really good at teaching the kids phonics also. It’s funny, at the time I didn’t even realize the show was teaching me how to read.

I’ll leave you with this bit of nostalgia. Ripping the letter "T" from his varsity sweater, Letterman changes the rain back into a train.

--Kelly

Early Decision programs in preschool? Yup, that’s just one of the facets of preschool admissions that are sounding more and more like college admissions, according to an article in the NY Times yesterday (“In Baby Boomlet, Preschool Derby is Fiercest Yet”, by Susan Saulny). Parents applying to the most selective programs even have to write pithy essays profiling their 18 month olds to get them accepted.

Maybe time will prove us wrong, but we just can’t see how going to one of these fancy preschools is really going to affect things downstream too much. Of course, all parents want their children in safe, nurturing environments that promote their happiness and early learning, but it’s not entirely clear that this requires upwards of 10 grand a year in tuition, along with hiring consultants to help with the applications and all the working oneself up into a lather that goes along with all this.

Of course, lots of people make money on parents’ anxiety in this regard. And that’s probably what keeps the whole thing going. But in the end it just seems bad for families to introduce this level of anxiety and competition over…ahem…preschool. You know, the place where you lace shoestrings through punch cards, learn the ABCs and sing the itsy bitsy spider song.

--Melanie & Kelly

For those tired of the Soccer Mom jokes, there’s a new stereotype just waiting for Leno and Letterman. Faster than a speeding Prius, able to leap tall, non-GMO corn in a single bound, it’s Yoga Mama!

Despite her front page appearance in The Chicago Tribune’s Sunday Q section, Yoga Mama doesn’t seem to have the popularity that Soccer Mom enjoys. Google has a paltry 46 thousand hits for Yoga Mama vs. nearly 1.7 million for good old Soccer Mom.

As for me, I take yoga but also my son does soccer. What does that make me? Socga Moma? Or maybe Yoger Mam. In all seriousness though, why do we need labels anyway? Can’t we just be mothers? Or, better yet, women.

--Kelly

P.S.: My husband says I'm just mad because I'm fitting the sterotype, after all, the Tribune listed one of the attributes of Yoga Mama as having her own blog!

Confirming my theory that we’re going to see less of aspartame, today’s NY Times reports that Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest food retailer, demanded that Coca-Cola use Splenda, not Nutrasweet in a new diet drink they recently developed. Apparently, their motivation was mostly marketing and sales, but it has a nice benefit for people who want a safer sweetener. Don’t say Wal-Mart never did anything for you.

--Melanie

Thanks to Melanie for picking up slack for me. This week has been insane! It was both my husband’s birthday (on Tuesday) and my son’s (today). Being the last minute kind of gal I am, I had nothing prepared for either, so have spent the whole week scrambling for presents, cake, and general merriment making things.

Barry wanted a reprise of the fabulous Benihana style dinner we had with Melanie and her family in Palm Springs, so I made him steak, scallops, and fried rice and tried my best to put on a show. I drew the line at tossing an egg into my hat though. Mostly because I don’t wear a hat.

My son, on the other hand, is a bit easier and wants to have dinner at Johnny Rockets, one of those pseudo-style fifties diners that you know I love. NOT! At least I don’t have to cook and after today it will all be over.

Or will it? I still have his birthday party for 10 boys to contend with. I’ve been trying to follow the pledge Melanie and I made (I’m having it at home) but my son said that if I didn’t give out goodie bags he would be the laughingstock of Kindergarten. At least they are small, just a strip of stickers and a pencil.

Is it April yet?

--Kelly

Pull up a chair and pop open a Pacifico. It's time for Thirsty Thursday. Join us if you want, invite a friend, and/or come back next week when we'll have a new Special.

What job in your past prepared you the best for parenting?

Kelly: Being a supervisor at an auto factory. The guys there didn’t listen, always wanted what the others had, and were all very sweet to me!

Melanie: Maybe being a camp cook for fifty people in the Youth Conservation Corps in Alaska. I’m not a gourmet chef, but now I can definitely produce in quantity on demand. I’m also a master at grocery list making and shopping. So that’s at least one skill that’s handy in parenting.

What job in your past was the most at odds with parenting?

Kelly: Being a waitress. Because I need to train myself not to wait on the kids (and husband) and have everyone be a little more self-sufficient.

Melanie: Scientific research. I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, and perfectionism was actually a plus. To say these are not elements of my life as a parent is a gross understatement!

What job do you think would integrate the best into your life as parent, if any?

Kelly: Being a freelance writer would be ideal. I’d be able to work from home and make my own hours. Plus, if I were writing about things and ideas that were important to me then it would be rewarding as well. Another idea I’ve tossed around with Melanie is working at a temp agency. I could pick when I wanted to work and be able to get out into the “real world” at times.

Melanie: I agree with Kelly, anything I can do from home is ideal for me right now, and that includes a mix of writing and editing. I also crave the interactions with others that come with a regular job. Thank goodness we have each other!

I don’t usually wear a purple suit and waddle around saying things like, “Oooooh, Whasssat?”, although I do carry a red purse.

Hopefully the red purse is the reason that I overheard my kids saying, “That’s Mommy!” When Tinky Winky came on the Teletubbies video this morning. Apparently Dipsy is Daddy, my older two daughters vie for being La La and my youngest is Po.

Hmmm. Too much TV?

--Melanie