Dinner in the nude

I considered not posting this story since it is more than a little embarrassing, but I just can't help myself. Why blog if not to expose myself and my family to national ridicule?

You see, Z was a bit of a pistol last night. From the minute I walked in the door, she was all over the place, showing me her Cinderella underpants...then insisting I change her into a diaper in the middle of the kitchen floor...while Daddy was cooking. And then heading upstairs unsupervised while I was washing vegetables so that she could fetch a clean diaper for her doll.

In any case, when she found out we were having salmon and potatoes for dinner, she pitched a royal fit for macaroni and cheese. It went on and on, but I wasn't budging. I told her she could try the fish and mashed potatoes, and if she didn't like them, she could have cereal. Under no circumstances would there be mac and cheese tonight!

She cried in the corner. She cried in my arms. She snuffled tears and snot onto my shoulder as I sat down to my dinner. And then, realizing that her crocodile tears weren't moving us, the crying stopped. She said, "I need to get down. My pants are wrong. I need to take them off."

Z slid off my lap and proceeded to remove her pants. And her socks. And her shirt. And her diaper.

"Why are you getting undressed?" Josh asked.
"Because I want to to take my clothes off," she replied.
"Why do you want to take your clothes off?"
"Because...I want to be naked!"

And then she climbed, naked as a jaybird, back onto my lap. Now I'm no prude and I'm glad my daughter is comfortable with her own body, but there is something just a little disturbing about eating a green salad while a 2 year old girl walks her hands over herself and says, "Look, my 'gina, my legs. I got all kinds of parts of my body!"

The good news is that Josh and I were able to suppress our giggles as we shot looks across the table at one another. And the table dance ended as quickly as it began. Yes, she did spend the rest of the evening in the nude, but I'm happy to report she ended up in her own chair. She tried 3 bites of mashed potatoes, declared she didn't like it, and polished off a bowl of Grape-Nuts instead.

I know the naked toddler is a cliche, but I'm not sure how other parents deal with it. Is any inside nudity okay, but outside nudity discouraged? Am I a complete freak for letting my daughter eat dinner in her birthday suit?

Free coffee

Get your free cup of joe Thursday at any Starbucks location. Just choose a less-trafficked location (unless you like waiting in long lines) and show up between 10 and 12am.

Fun on the front porch

It's likely it won't be 73 degrees when I arrive home from work today, but yesterday was simply glorious. Z had lots of fun telling me that I was the baby and I "needed to go to sleep and stay in my bed." She would head for the door and say, "I'm going downstairs!" Then, seconds later she'd say, "What's wrong? You thirsty? You want some water?"

I guess I'm really pregnant now

I've gained 15 lbs, my belly's out to here, and this week I started feeling pregnancy symptoms for the first time. I'm one of the lucky ones who never felt suffered from morning sickness, and I couldn't feel the baby move until just last month. I consider myself one of the lucky ones for whom pregnancy is pretty "easy." I'm youngish, low-risk and healthy.

So while I'm still answering my co-workers' "How are you feeling?" questions with a "Just great, thanks," it's more because I don't want to regale them with my tales of below the belt suffering. The acrobatic backflips baby's performing in my belly. The way she's pushing down on my bladder so that I find myself running to the bathroom only to squeeze out the tiniest tinkle. The, er, extra fiber my diet requires. And the waking up with my leg completely immobilized by calf cramps. The next 17 weeks should be fun.

I need your help

Once in a great while my work life coincides with my personal interest in blogging, and this is just such a time. I know I've stumbled across a couple of mommy bloggers famous for their crafting-with-kids ideas, and I am sure there are other moms out there who are great resources for coming up with activities and projects appropriate for grade school kids. Can anyone point me to some great sites/blogs?

Two Dystopian Futures

I guess I'm a sucker for movies and literature set in the future. I loved The Handmaid's Tale and I couldn't even bring myself to hit pause on our DVD copy of Children of Men--I sat through the whole film simultaneously thirsty and having to pee. So I was delighted by Speak Up's clever entry on Idiocracy, the movie nobody saw (excepting me and Josh, perhaps). What I love is all of the screen shots of all of brand names, (d)evolved as they have in a society where the lowest common denominator dominates. Yes, in this bleak future our country is governed by a porn star, our crops are dying because we're watering them with a Gatorade-like sports drink and Costco stretches on for city block after city block.

Weekend highlights

In no particular order...

1. Seeing Jon Brion with Josh at the Steppenwolf Theatre Friday night
2. Seeing Z's face light up when the babysitter arrived
3. Sharing a mess of barbecue from Robinson's Ribs with our friends Julie and Steve and their kids Saturday night
4. Watching their daughter Ania and Z play nicely on their own while we licked BBQ sauce off our fingers
5. Finding Josh a pair of snazzy pants and a shirt and sweater to match at Banana Republic
6. Discovering that BR has a bathroom with a changing table
7. Breaking out Z's red wagon
8. Hitting the playground for the first time in 4 months
9. Taking advantage of the extra hour of daylight by staying there until dinnertime
10. Having breakfast cereal and toast for dinner

Why

It's a cliche, so I knew it was inevitable that we'd hear the question sooner or later, but the whys have hit our household full force.

"We need to stop at the gas station to get gas."
"Why?"
"Because the gas light went on. The car needs gas."
"Why?"
"The car is hungry for gas. It's saying 'feed me.'"
"Why?"
"Because cars need gas to run."
"Why?"
"Because that's how they work. Without gas, they won't go."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"Oh. Because."

Spring cleaning

Chicago's long, cold freeze finally broke and today it is absolutely glorious. And with spring on the way, my front porch will no longer be a mere pass-through on the way into our house.

So I decided to spend Z's naptime giving our more-two-than-three season room a thorough cleaning--no easy task considering it is all windows. Old-fashioned tiny paned windows covered by soot-filled screens and gritty storm windows. All so old and warped that nothing quite fits together. And since it is about 10 steps off the ground, I had to use a bucket of vinegar and water, a mop and a ladder to clean the outside.

Anyway, getting my porch cleaned would have been rewarding on its own, but I was doubly delighted to see all of my neighbors emerge from hibernation and take to the streets with their much-grown babies, toddlers and dogs. This area may suffer from some miserable winters, but the snow and ice is worth seeing the broad smiles as everyone heads back outside in the springtime. We do not take good weather for granted, that's for sure.

Speaking of folks out for a stroll, Josh walked to Walgreens and reported that I wasn't the only Oak Parker with a yen for spring cleaning. Apparently the entire block smells of cleaning supplies.

No patience for being a patient

I'm home sick today, feeding a vicious cold with hourly trips into the kitchen. I think I would be a cow if I was home full-time.

Anyway, after finishing up a presentation deck and emailing it off to the office, I've been busying myself with the production and consumption of the hot water/lemon juice/honey mixture first prepared for me by the British nanny of some family friends when I was about twelve years old. My sister and I had been staying at their home in Islamabad, Pakistan while my dad was medivaced to Germany with acute pancreatitis (my mother accompanied him). I'm always impressed by how well this hot lemonade soothes a sore throat.

I'm less impressed with network television's daytime viewing options. Seriously, after Oprah and The View, there is nothing on but low-budget soaps and hour after hour of court shows. Cristina's Court, the People's Court, Divorce Court, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Mills Lane...even the logos for these shows are virtually identical!

Bookshelf: Ice cold winter reading

I just finished two completely different books, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home and Jodi Picoult's The Tenth Circle. The former is an OMG-I-can't-put-this-down first person account of a horrific plane crash and the suffering that followed as the survivors scraped out an existence high in the Andes, while the second is thoroughly middle-brow contemporary tale of family secrets and revenge. Yet both included very vivid descriptions of freezing nearly to death.

Now I'm reading Anita Diamant's The Last Days of Dogtown, which I chose because--like seemingly every woman I've ever met--I'm a big fan of The Red Tent. It's pretty good, but not so riveting I can't push it aside for a fresh issue of the The New Yorker.

Red in the face?

I'm a big proponent of cause marketing. We live in a branded culture and most consumers don't mind one bit. I think big companies are uniquely positioned to champion causes that make sense for their brands and connect with their consumers. We spend all day with our favorite brands, so why not learn something from the back of a cereal box, save those soup can labels for our schools or reach for the coffee brand that invests in growers' communities? There is a real opportunity raise awareness and funds for worthy causes, and plenty of companies have done quite well doing good.

But what if a brand spends a whole lot more money talking about all the good they're doing? How will consumers react? Ad Age raises the possibility of a consumer backlash against the Red campaign, which is supposed to be raising money to battle AIDS in Africa. Powerhouse brands like the Gap, Motorola and Apple have spent over $100 million pushing Red, and it's not just Bono behind the effort: celebrities from Oprah to Chris Rock to Christy Turlington have promoted the cause.

You'd expect the cash raised to be pretty significant, right? Well, according to Ad Age, just $18 million has been raised worldwide. Kind of a drop in the bucket. Do consumers care? They're not going to stop consuming altogether, but will they become more cynical, losing respect for companies who treat cause marketing as more campaign than commitment?

I'm curious, do you shop for brands that claim to give back? Which brands do you believe have a real commitment to a cause? Is there a particular cause that connects with you?

Cool to a tee

Chicago-based Threadless is having a $10 "Spring Broke" tee shirt sale, making now the perfect time to stock up on tees you won't see anyone else wearing. I love the Threadless business model: let anyone who wants to design a tee shirt, ask the public to vote for their favorite, and print up limited runs of winning designs on high-quality tees.

Personally, I've got my eye on Nineteen Seventy Five.

21 weeks!

You'd think a belly like this would earn me a seat on the CTA this morning, but no such luck.



One advantage of a growing a baby--I've got a built-in perch for the soon-to-be big sister. Can't get enough pregnancy photos? Check out Adventures in Babywearing.

How to kill your brand

The LA Times has a great article on how once beloved brands expand too quickly, losing the very quirky uniqueness that attracted customers in the first place. First on the list companies that have overreached and lost their way is Starbucks. As most people know by now, an internal memo penned by CEO Howard Schultz went public after being anonymously posted to a Starbucks Gossip site. In the memo, Schultz admits that Starbucks has cut too many corners and become too sanitized, too corporate. It is in danger of losing its cultishly loyal devotees, in spite of their caffeine addition.

Of course, for every once-loved Krispy Kreme or Snapple, there are Chipotle and Trader Joe's, companies that have slavishly held tight to their brand personalities while expanding nationwide. How will other brands fare? Will Potbelly Sandwich Works still hire cheerful workers behind the line and tolerable singer-songwriters to serenade us from above the booths. Will their milkshakes get watered down into "shakes," a la Mickey D's?

In my experience, Cold Stone Creamery, Cosi, Jamba Juice and Maggiano's Little Italy/Corner Bakery seem to be doing a good job keeping their USP (unique selling proposition) in sight as they grow. Will Whole Foods Market?

Weekend highlights

The Saturday morning Ralph's World concert at HOB was a huge hit. Z seemed a tiny bit overwhelmed by the sell-out crowd on the floor and by our fairly crowded VIP balcony (we're spoiled by Josh's connections). However, she wasn't too shy to pipe up with this gem when asked her name by one of the other parents: "I have a baby sister. She's not here yet. She's in Mommy's tummy. She's coming later."

The woman looked up at me, her gaze shifting over my baggy maternity blouse. I nodded that yes, I was expecting. And yes, it was a girl.

After her afternoon nap, Z was delighted to have two of her best buddies over. And Josh entertained all three girls, treating us moms to an hour or so of virtually uninterrupted conversation.

Saturday evening I put Z in the bath with her "naked baby," a water-friendly plastic doll. She was giving her baby a bottle, when she looked up at me and announced, "I got to give baby a bottle. I put it in her mouth. It's got milk in it. It's not for you, Mommy. You can't have it. It's got hand prints on it. It's got blue hand prints."

Today Z again raided my closet for "Mommy dress-up clothes," settling on an apricot maternity tank top over a silky half slip. The whole ensemble was held up with hair clips and a pink sparkly belt.


We also used our webcam for the first time, "videoconferencing" with my in-laws on Skype. It was pretty cool to see Z performing for her grandparents as she looked at them on our computer. But since she's got the attention span of a flea, she kept asking us to "go to pbskids.org...let me check my e-mail." And no, my 2-year-old does not have an email account.

Come crash my party

The lovely ladies at 5 Minutes for Mom dreamed up a brilliant way for us time-pressed, pants-not-so-much mommy bloggers to socialize--The Ultimate Blog Party So help yourself to the half bottle of wine in your own fridge, grab a handful of broken animal crackers and pull up a...never mind.

Anyway, let's mix, mingle and meet a few fresh faces. If I'm new to you, feel free to pepper me with embarrassing questions. While you're thinking, here's a Q for you: who among your non-blogging friends knows about and reads your blog? How willingly do you pass out your address?

Itty bitty rock show

Tomorrow morning we're headed to the House of Blues for a Ralph's World concert. I've been to shows sponsored by beer brands, liquor companies, cigarettes and mobile phone makers, but I've never been to a concert "presented by Rice Krispies."

I know Z will have a blast, and I'll have a great time watching her dance around to "Dance Around."

The Saints are Coming

I realize that by posting yet another video it looks like I'm being lazy. But I think this U2/Green Day collaboration is worth sharing. The end of the video brought tears to my eyes. Yeah, I'm hormonal. But still.

Robot has a bad day

Proof that great TV advertising still exists.