Jenna Glatzer, Ghostwriter

We've discovered the best game ever. It goes like this: 1. Mommy sticks a pail on her head. 2. Mommy says, "Hey, Sarina, what do you think of my new hat? Isn't it a lovely hat? I sure hope nobody steals my hat." 3. Sarina steals the hat. 4. Mommy hollers, "Ohh! How did you do it? How did you steal Mommy's hat?" 5. Sarina screams laughing. 6. Repeat, endlessly. We can do this for hours. It just never gets old.

She sure did. Her first word was "mama" during month 6. Last night, she started saying "baba." The adorableness of it is almost too much to bear. I awoke to the sounds of her practicing. "Ba... bama... maba... mbababababa!"

Please, visit here: http://www.xanga.com/no_Im_not_a_nurse That's Licia's blog. She runs a rescue center in Haiti. Before I had Sarina, I felt sympathy for suffering children. Now it's a physical pain that I can barely stand. I see Henrius, the five-year-old in the video, crying... and I think of my daughter and how much it kills me to hear her cry for five minutes because she has teething pain. That boy's skin is peeling off because of malnutrition. This is a center with 50-60 children in it at a time, not a giant company with corrupt executives. This is a place where you can actually help people save children's lives. Licia's sister, Lori, also has a blog. She runs the medical clinic next to the rescue center, where they see about 700 patients a week. There's a PayPal link and an address to send donations here: http://xanga.com/haitinurse4life They're doing the heavy lifting. Let's do the easy part. Please, spread the word. Let's make sure th...

Sarina's two front teeth are spaced widely apart so far, which makes me think back to my own youth, in which-- I am not kidding-- my parents had our Christmas card pictures retouched to erase some of my hideously gapped buck teeth. And this was before Photoshop, when you actually had to pay a photo lab to fix things with colored pencils or somesuch. Ahhh, braces. I would have been such a freak without you. Other people save for college when their kids are born. We're saving up for the orthodontist.

Michelle tagged me to write a post about what I would write if I had an extra hour every day to write . Hmm. Now, the real answer is that I'd just use that hour to get my assignments done, but I have to assume that the spirit of this meme is to find out what our "heart projects" are. Someone else asked me about that by e-mail recently. Well, technically, I asked myself. It went sort of like this: He asked me if there was anything no one ever asked me about my writing before that I wanted to be asked. I said I had never been asked if there was anything I wanted to write but wouldn't. So... he asked. Anyway, what I explained then was that I had several ideas for books that I'd love to write, but wouldn't be commercial enough to justify the time I'd spend on them. Some Absolute Write readers might remember the time I went searching for a book that would be appropriate to teach my brother (who has Down syndrome) about dating. He had asked me for a book that w...

Yes, she did have (ahem) more than one costume. What can I say? Babies 'R' Us had a clearance sale, and her dad got excited.

So where was I? (Read the previous post first if you haven't already. I'm writing about how I became a writer. I'll wait here.) Right, so I was now an advertising major, and as such, had to take writing courses. That was cool by me because I had always enjoyed writing and had taken elective writing courses as an art major. I had even tried to take an advanced workshop in poetry, but I was turned down. What a disappointment that was! I remember waiting outside the class when the list was posted, and searching and searching for my name. I remember, too, the poem I used as an "audition," and how stupid I felt afterwards. Dumb poem! Why did I write you? Why did I think you were any good? I had a slightly weird writing history in school. Very early on-- I'm talking first grade, I think-- my teacher wrote on my report card that she expected to see my name on the New York Times Bestseller List. My mom, who was an English teacher and thrilled! thrilled! thrilled! by t...