Jenna Glatzer, Ghostwriter

Lookit! Lookit who's a "Best Eyes" finalist! http://poshietots.blogspot.com/2008/03/help-us-choose-our-fabulous-baby.html She does have fabulous lashes, I must say. I'd sure love it if you'd go over there and vote for Sarina. Winner gets a $50 gift certificate to their shop and a blanket.

This is a picture that, to me, sums up my daughter pretty well: That's from a couple of days ago. She has a cough, cold, double ear infection, and sore throat. You can see that one eye is more closed than the other. And still, she is so grinny and so full of love. This is today: For her one-year birthday, she decided to just talk up a storm. I'm sure I'm leaving some out, but here are the words she now says, in approximate order of when she said them: mama, baba, cat, dada, ball, girl, "bo" (almost boy), uh-oh, coat, good girl, boom (or bummmm!), moon, comb, car. She learned "comb" and "car" today. I should add, though, that she still doesn't know who "mama" is. I thought she did, but alas, then she pointed to the photo of a black 4-year-old girl and said "Mama!" Hoping it was a brief case of amnesia, I forgave her. Next she pointed to a little blond boy and declared "Mama," too. Then a turtle. I give up. She i...

Whoever invented baby sign language gets an A+ in my book. Sarina now tells me when she's tired or hungry. She does the sign for "sleep," and if I don't pay attention fast enough, she grabs my hand and does the sign for sleep with my hand, too. And she does the "eating" sign roughly every 3 minutes... 'cause the girl likes her snacks! She's a sign language whiz, I tell you. She knows: more, cereal, moon, stars, eating, hat, love, sleep, bib... Her first birthday is so close now (March 2). I can't believe her baby year is almost over already. I'm not going to have a baby anymore... I'm going to have a toddler! I'm not ready for that! But anyway... have some new pics. I hope they make you smile. Thanks to Amanda and and Lisa McGrath for the great lounge set! Amanda made the pants and Lisa made the shirt.

As I passed him, a man working at a booth in the mall whistled. At me. Probably at me. I mean, I'm almost certain. I was wearing my winter coat and pushing a stroller containing my exquisitely wonderful 11-month old, which made it more exciting to get whistled at. It's funny how, when you're under 30, you want to clobber the louts who wolf-whistle at you. When you're over 30, you think maybe you should give them $5 tips, those sweet gentlemen! So I walked away thinking, "Go, me. That classy mall worker thinks I'm a hot mama. It must be so! This bulky coat can't contain my explosive inner hottitude." But then I second-guessed myself. Maybe there was a gorgeous little college woman walking next to me and I didn't notice her because I was too busy cultivating my inner hottitude. Maybe that was someone else's whistle that I was taking credit for. And I briefly contemplated walking back to the mall worker and asking, "Excuse me, but was that me...

Congrats to Jennifer at The Word Cellar , who won herself a copy of The Street-Smart Writer . If you haven't already, go read the comments on my giveaway post-- they're great.

Sarina has really never been around babies or kids. There just aren't any in my family (I'm the oldest among all the siblings and cousins, and the first to have a baby). So I brought her to Gymboree last week, in part to see how she'd react. There was only one other baby there (9 months old and petite, whereas Sarina is a giant, so they didn't look close in age). So the sweetest thing was that Sarina kept crawling her way over to the baby, trying to play. She tried to pass a ball to her, but I don't think the other baby was interested. Still, Sarina waved to her at the end of class. I nearly cried from adorable overload. I brought her back this week, and there were bunches of babies! And what she wanted to do was touch the babies. She would crawl over to a little one, then touch a leg or arm or whatever. She often tried handing them her toys-- she's REALLY into sharing. No one took her up on her offers, though. One baby boy was standing, and she used his leg to ...

Hi, Bloggy Giveaways people! I've vaccuumed and set up a couple of gallons of coffee and tea and baked up some pigs in blankets in anticipation of your arrival. Oh, and some potato puffs and a veggie platter for the vegetarians among us. This is my first bloggy giveaway. Yay, me! I'm giving away one of my books-- your choice between Bullyproof Your Child for Life and The Street-Smart Writer . Bullyproof Your Child for Life is a book I co-wrote with Dr. Joel Haber ("The Bully Coach"). It teaches strategies for warding off current bullies and making your kids less attractive to bullies in the future. It covers a variety of situations: school, camp, sports, and online, with a special section for kids with special needs. Read more here . The Street-Smart Writer is a book I co-wrote with publishing attorney Daniel Steven about avoiding scams and seedy characters in the writing and publishing world, so you can publish your work without worrying about getting ripped off ...

So, I went to a thrift store yesterday and bought a couple of outfits for Sarina and some foam alphabet tiles-- the kind you put on the floor. I was very excited about this purchase: costs $25 new, but I got it for just $3! Yay, me!, I'm thinking. Sure, they were a bit dirty, but nothing a sponge and soap won't fix. An hour and 11 minutes into the scrubbing, I thought perhaps there might have been a better use of my time. That's when I began calculating. The gas money it took to drive BACK to the thrift store today when I realized I left these fabulous alphabet tiles on their counter. The sponge I used up while washing my brains out. The soap. The hot water for an hour and 17 minutes (which eventually went cold and turned my pruny hands to ice). The fact that I could have written something during that hour and 17 minutes that would have earned more than the $22 difference in prices. The fact that there are still pen marks I couldn't remove. And then. Then, there was thi...

I think Sarina's been holding out on me. There's this book, Your Baby Can Read! My First Words , a "slide & learn" book-- you slide the windows to see pictures of the words. Anyway, she's really into that book. She slides the windows across herself, and lately, she's been acting out the actions in the photos. For example, the word "hi," or "clapping," or "book." She waves at the girl who says hi, she claps along with the babies, and she does the sign for "book" when she sees the picture of the girl reading. It's been amazing, and again, all at once. She reacts to about 8 of the 30 photos so far. So, we were looking through at some of the words she hadn't yet reacted to (like "eyes" and "ears"), and I said, "Where are Sarina's eyes?" And she pointed to them. I almost fell over. "Where are Sarina's ears?" Duh, right here, Mommy. Head? Check. Mouth? Got it. She di...

Well, I've pumped my last pump. It took me three sessions just to get one bottle (and not even a full bottle, at that... five ounces), so I had some time to think about how I wanted that last bottle to go. That's right-- we had "dinner by candlelight." Lullabies in the background, snuggled up on the glider. It was a fitting ending. I had a very big sense of pride that I was able to provide for her for this long, and the truth is that I feel a strange sort of loss that it's over. I sure won't miss the pump, but there's been a loving feeling that goes along with feedings-- "Hey, I made that for you. Hope you like it!" My original goal was to make it to 6 months; my later goal was to make it to 12. I made it to 10 and a week.

I bit her! By accident! See, remember a few posts ago, I told you she loves to share stuff now? Well, she reached out to offer me a bite of her delectable wheat teething biscuit. What I failed to detect was that, apparently, moments before my mouth made it over to accept said biscuit, she dropped it. So instead of sinking my teeth into a biscuit, I bit her fingers. And what's worse is that I didn't realize it right away. I bit harder because-- "darn, this biscuit is hard to bite through." And that's when she looked at me like, WHY, MOMMY, WHY? And cried. And I realized I had just nearly taken a chunk out of my wonderful child's tiny fingers. I bit the hand that fed me. She forgave me quickly and even offered me another bite, but I can't help but think she's going to have a messed up psyche now, thinking that people who love you might turn on you at any second and attempt to bite your fingers off. I fear she will join a baby gang and get caught stealin...

I forgot to mention this yesterday: I'm quite pleased to announce that Sarina is in love with board books. Whereas earlier, she mostly just tried to eat them (I even had a much-repeated motto for her: "Books are for reading, not for eating!"), now she flips the pages, looks at the pictures, touches the touchy spots, and listens while I read. It's the coolest. Every day, several times a day, she goes over to her bookshelf and takes all the books down (yes, cleaning up after her is a bit tiresome). She finds one or two to focus on, then we read them. Her favorites are Don't Be So Nosy , Posy and Rainbow Rob . I'm glad, because honestly, I don't "get" some of the more popular ones-- like I Love You, Little One : "I love you as the river loves you," it says, and I want to scream, "No! The river is an inanimate object! It has no capacity for love. I love you waaay more than the river loves you!" And each "I love you as the ___...

and I'm stalled again. Here I am, over word count, at the end of the Marilyn Monroe book, and I've been stuck for two days trying to think of an ending. I've already written about her death. Now how to close it? Everything I can think of seems too obvious and anticlimactic. "Lookit, all these years later, she's still such a legend... her legacy lives on... blah blah." Other biographers have wound it up with a really good quote or anecdote, which is what I'd like to do, but I don't have one that seems fitting as an ending. She's been in my dreams nearly every night. It's interesting... I don't remember ever dreaming so much about a book subject before. I think it's because I keep going to bed with my own little conversation with her in my head-- I ask her how she'd want me to write this book, what the truth is, how she'd want to be remembered. I guess it's sort of a prayer. Anyway. Here is the shot I caught of Sarina walking ...

There are certain things in life that, once you've had the "good stuff," you can't go back to the regular stuff. I have just discovered that this is true of smooshy mattresses. Toward the end of my pregnancy, when I couldn't get comfortable, my mom gave me one of those squishy memory foam mattress toppers. The other day, I pulled it off the bed with the intention of cleaning it (before I was stymied by the actual process-- how exactly do you wash queen-sized memory foam? With soap and a hose in the backyard in the summer, maybe, but in the winter? I'm stumped). Anyway, it's still off the bed, and I'm miserable. How did I not know that I was sleeping on a pile of bricks before? For roughly 7 years? Oh, and I did finally buy Sarina that tutu, after all. It arrived on Christmas Eve! I even wrote to the post office to thank them for such amazing delivery-- it arrived overnight, even though it was sent Priority Mail. I had no hope of receiving it before Chr...

Mmm! This is the best teething biscuit I've ever had. I got my hair bow from Mama's Girls Bows over here . I got my flower clip from Bow Baby Bow over here . Today, Santa Claus was in my very own house. I wasn't quite sure what to make of him, but he turned out to be pretty cool. He gave me peach puffs. I love standing. I thought sitting was cool, but man, standing is so awesome. You should try it.

Sarina is learning things at an astonishing rate right now-- I feel like she's in the middle of another of these "milestone madness" weeks. Among other things, she is now calling the cat "ca." She doesn't yet know that I'm "mama" (she uses the word "mama" all the time, but doesn't associate it particularly with me), but she knows the cat. You know what's funny? I totally predicted that. She's so in love with my cat. I guessed a while back that her first real word would be "cat," (or "kitty," which is what I usually call her). The beautiful thing, though, is that she's learned to share. She will feed her mommy one of her peach puffs, or share her gummed-up biscuit with me. I never would have thought that I would have accepted a half-eaten teething biscuit from another human being, but you know? When it's your baby, it's just not gross. It's beautiful. Last night, we took turns. She fed me...

I'm hoping and hoping to finish the Marilyn Monroe first draft before Christmas. I'm not sure if it's possible yet, but I'm going to try. I've interviewed a number of people for it, but am still trying hard for several others. Did you know Gina Lollobrigida and Marilyn were good friends? I'm trying to reach her, and Eli Wallach, and her singing coach, and... well, about 50 others who haven't yet answered me. Time is getting tight. I have enough material already, but it would add a lot to the book if I could speak to people who don't ordinarily speak about Marilyn. I'm aiming to get interesting little anecdotes from people who met her along the way somewhere, even in very limited capacities. (Psst, know anyone who knew Marilyn Monroe? I'll be your BFF.) I'm so distractable about the actual writing, though. Every night, I tell myself I'll do nothing but write, but I have irresistible impulses to do stupid things online. Like, does eBay have...

Thank you to Chesapeake Ribbons for the lovely hair bow!

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!"