Now appearing in Canadian Family magazine

How do you pull a blogger out of a tailspin? Not chocolate, not diamonds, not swedish massage from brawny blond masseurs (although if you're looking for suggestions, all of these are certainly acceptable second-string choices.)

No, if you really want to cheer up a blogger with attention-junkie disorder, give her validation by putting her name AND her blog link in print in a major parenting magazine.

My friend, fellow blogger and parenting author extraordinaire Ann Douglas has written an article for the summer issue of Canadian Family magazine on mom blogging and mom blogs, featuring quotes from Marla and Jen and, um, who was that other one? The one with the lead quote in the article? Oh yeah, me! I can't find the article online just yet, but if they do put it up I'll be sure to let you know. The article is a good exploration of why moms blog, and gives a balanced insight into both the highs and potential lows of blogging.

The irony is that in the lead quote (I'm going from memory here, having forgotten my copy at home) I called the momosphere a kind of massive parenting manual, where there is no question that can't be answered with a search engine and a bit of patience. I wasn't sure that the blogosphere could resolve my current daycare situation, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. In the process, I've invented a new tool: blog search as oracle.

Key your question into the search engine of your choice. Google's blog search would work, but I wanted to narrow my search down to advice from the parenting blogs so I used Scribbit's parenting blog search tool way down there there on my sidebar.

I keyed in "will my search for daycare end well?" and scanned the results for the words "yes" or "no". (I used "find" from the IE toolbar menu to make sure I didn't miss anything.) The oracle of parenting blogs confirms that YES, the search for daycare will end well. Phew, that's certainly a load off my mind!

Thanks, as well, to the Huffington Post, who linked to all the posts on the MotherTalk Blog Bonanza on Fearless Friday, including the post I wrote about Tristan on two wheels.

Now, excuse me while I go use my new blogosphere-as-oracle trick to see if the Sens are going to defeat the Ducks in five games or seven...

My 15 minutes in Chatelaine

Thanks to my colleague Rebecca, who was the first to realize that the Chatelaine article I mentioned is already posted online! No more skulking around the magazine racks at every grocery store and news stand in town, waiting for the paper copy to arrive. Er, not that I was doing that, of course.

Anyway, it's with great pleasure and excitement (and a certain lack of subtlety) that I happily point you toward the article in the online May edition of Chatelaine magazine, In vitro we trust - coming soon to a paper edition near you! In my humble opinion, even past the bits that feature me, it's a well balanced and informative article about the state of reproductive technologies in Canada. It's quite long, though - nine screens' worth - so grab a cup of your beverage of choice before you settle in if you want to read the whole thing.

There's nothing about our story that you haven't already read here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here (shameless, aren't I?) but it still tickles me to see it all laid out like that in somebody else's words. I was pleased to see that the article manages to shout out both boys and blog by name (sadly, without a direct link. Oh well.)

Even though we knew it was coming and discussed it in advance, I still cringed just a bit when I saw the bit outing Beloved's low sperm count. We've come a long way from the days immediately after our diagnosis, when we could barely discuss it between ourselves. By now, of course, he has become rather acclimatized to me discussing our most intimate moments with the widest possible audience - in blog, on national TV (not once, but twice!) and now in a national magazine as well. He took it in stride, and in fact insists I correct the record by clarifying that it's not so much that his sperm are not copious, but that (in his words, not mine) they are "stupid". The fertility doctors used the slightly more clinical term, "of impaired morphology", but you get the point.

All this to say, in my usual belaboured and roundabout way, that I'm terribly proud to be featured in the article. In case you hadn't gleaned that from my oh-so-understated neon billboard of a post about it.

Ooooh, pretty shiny silver!

I've always been fond of silver. The first ring that I wore on a daily basis was a silver and turquoise ring my parents gave me for Christmas circa 1983. My wedding rings and my other favourite ring are white gold, which is basically silver for spoiled girls. Even my teeth are filled with shiny silver fillings.

And now, blog has a beautiful siler maple leaf to wear with pride, thanks to our second place finish in the Canadian Blog Awards best family blog category.

(insert pretty silver maple leaf here, when Blogger deigns to let me post an image)

The finish was a real nail-biter, and we placed a mere 982 votes behind the winner. (I don't even want to think about what kind of day I would have had to have last week to pull in that many votes!) Congratulations to Kristin and Ali and Carly and MetroMama and Catherine, and all the other bloggers who were nominated. I really thought I knew my way around the Canadian blogosphere, but I found a lot of great new blogs to read this past couple of weeks thanks to the CBAs.

And of course, thank to you all of you for your votes, and for your patience with this whole blog award silliness, and for your ongoing love and support. You know I'm fond of words, and I simply can't find enough of them to tell you how honoured I am that you voted for me, and how touched I have been by your recent kindness.

I had a much longer, sappier post in mind, but I'm having trouble pulling the words together without sounding maudlin or saccharine. Plus, there's a guy stage left with a big hook, and Chuck Barris just rolled the gong out stage right, so maybe I'll leave it with a simple thank you.

Thank you. Really, and sincerely. Thank you!

Recap in too many words

You know how when you've been looking forward to something for a reaaaaaalllllyyyy long time, and the closer it gets the more excited you get, until after a year (literally, a year since we first started talking about it) of planning and talking and thinking and speculating and wondering, when the morning of the event actually arrives, you are so excited that nothing could possibly live up to your expectations?

This wasn't one of those times.

This time, even though my expectations were torqued unbelievably high, everything exceeded my wildest dreams. The five-hour drive on the way down passed in the blink of an eye, or more accurately, the wag of a tongue. I don't think Andrea and I stopped chatting for more than a quarter of a kilometer at a time. She is a perfect road-trip companion!

It was just after one o'clock when we arrived chez Marla. Marla is *exactly* like she appears in her blog - kind, quirky, smart, and side-splittingly funny. She is also an amazing hostess, and she makes, no joke, the best chicken noodle soup that I have ever had in my life, complete with hominy and avocado (really, I was a little hesitant when she offered to put avocado in mine, but it was DIVINE!)

And Josephine - it was hard not to just scoop her up and stuff her in my suitcase and take her home with me. On Saturday morning, I was just rustling myself out of bed when she wandered tentatively into the guest room. She reclined against the fluffed pillow, the grey morning light bathing her blond tousled hair, and my heart melted. She's exquisite!

So then we had this panel thing to do. Oh yes, the conference!

We arrived a healthy 30 minutes or so before we were scheduled to start, and I was extremely nervous. I hadn't had nearly the opportunities to practise my talk that I would have wanted, and I was antsy with so much time to kill. Luckily, the extra time gave me a chance to finally meet in person some people I've been admiring online for so long that it was almost surreal to finally meet them in person: Miche, Andrea Gordon, Kate, Nadine/Scarbie Doll, and even one of the editors from the Citizen. Very very cool people! I was starstruck before I even began talking.

The audience was very friendly, and when they laughed at my first joke ("Blog itself is short for 'weblog,' which is short for 'we blog because we weren't very popular in high school and we're trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people'") almost all my fear evaporated and I really enjoyed speaking.

My co-panelists did an amazing job as well. I'm so proud of them for their hard work, their great style and their terrific presentations! Andrea will be posting everyone's essays on the next edition of The Whole Mom in a couple of weeks, and although we did digitally record the whole thing, we haven't quite figured out if and how we might podcast it.

To me, the highlight of the presentation was the question and answer session afterward, for a couple of reasons. First, I was afraid no-one would say anything. I needn't have worried! We not only had a fascinating discourse, but we went over our alotted time by half an hour, and I'm sure we could have continued on for two hours more. It was during the QA that I realized that two of my all-time favourite bloggers, among the first friends I had made in the blog world, were in the audience. When I realized who it was, I'm sure I literally gasped, and I turned to Ann sitting beside me. "Is that... is that... is that Emily and Cooper from Been There?" I asked, incredulous and reverent at the same time. "It sure is," Ann replied, "and I got to hug them yesterday!" I was so excited I could barely stay in my chair for the rest of the session.

I was still reeling from the surprise of finding Cooper and Emily in the audience, so I was barely prepared for the next shock of recognition. There had been a woman in the front row who had been obviously paying close attention to what I was saying, nodding encouragingly and with agreement through a lot of my presentation. I didn't know who she was, but she seemed very receptive to what we were saying, and her manner relaxed and encouraged me. In making a point during the QA, she made a reference to "my book Mothershock" and again I nearly swooned with celebrity recognition. Again I turned to Ann, probably not to sotto voce as I should have been, and gasped "Is that - Andi Buchanan?", to which Ann only smiled and nodded, her eyes bright with laughter.

After the QA officially ended, we had a few more minutes to chat in small groups and catch up. An ongoing theme of the weekend emerged: we have so much to say, so little time, and really, we could go on like this for hours. I also had the chance to meet Her Bad Mother oh so briefly as well - she also did her own presentation at the conference, and through a fluke of scheduling, her talk was at the same time as ours. So many bloggers, so much so say - and so little time!!

Into the rainy night we hustled to our next destination - Jen's place for dinner and an old-fashioned hen session with a decidedly intellectual bent. I want to write a whole other blog post about some of the themes we covered, especially the differences in raising girls and boys (we were loosely basing our discussions on the books that Andi Buchanan edited, It's A Boy and It's a Girl) and how we mother according to how we were mothered. Fascinating! I only wish it could have gone on for about six more hours... I really think we could have all talked that long.

Back to Marla's place where I fell exhaustedly into bed, and Andrea was kind enough to relinquish the guest bed to me and take the new comfy couch for herself. I slept in until 7:30!! That alone would make a noteworthy weekend! Lattes and conversation and Josie's antics warmed us into a rainy grey morning.

And then (pause for breath) we met up with our co-panelists and Andi and Sue Allan from the Ottawa Citizen to have a little post-panel debrief over coffee and diner breakfast. More fascinating conversation ensued, and I got to meet the lovely and charming Frances, daughter of Andrea.

We rounded out the morning with some intensive retail therapy at the Mecca of all Winners. You'd think with this crowd, our arms would be bursting with handbags and shoes and accessories, but no - I had to laugh when the vast majority of everyone's purchases were made in the toy section. Even when you take the mother out on the town, you can't leave the mother behind. The boys loved the Play Dough (or, as Simon says, Play-day-doh) alphabet set, and for $6.99, it was a steal to ease my maternal guilt at leaving them behind for the weekend.

We had to leave too early in the day for my tastes, as I really could have spent another day chatting and wandering and shopping, but the weather was threatening to turn bad, and I had promised my boys we'd be back for bedtime on Saturday, so Andrea and I passed another agreeable if not slightly more mellow couple of hours in the car on the way home.

Oh, and that little conference thing of ours? Turns out at least somebody was paying attention, given the fact that my new hero Jen was quoted extensively on the FRONT PAGE of the weekend edition of the National freakin' Post!

I think I've officially run out of superlatives. What a weekend!

Welcome to my sandbox: My Motherlode presentation

I'm tucking this into Blogger's capable hands the day before the Motherlode conference in Toronto. This is the presentation as I originally wrote it, but then I cut it down to just the key words and key points in my own speaking notes, so who knows how it will actually turn out. When I'm back from Toronto and have finished smothering my left-behind men with kisses, I'll post links to the rest of the presentations, too. And of course, through the next week you'll be subjected to a painfully detailed blow-by-blow analysis of the presentations in particular and the weekend in general.

But for now, here's what I intended to say:

• Hello, and on behalf of my friends up here with me – welcome! My name is Dani, and I write a blog called Postcards from the Mothership. I’ve been blogging for almost two years, which almost qualifies me as old skool. I’m also the mom of two boys, ages two and a half and four and a half.
  
• Before we get started, I’d like to ask how many of you have ever heard of a blog before today?And how many of you have read a blog?And how many of you have blogs of your own, or have ever kept a blog?
  
• So the first thing I’d like to do is beg your indulgence while I take a minute to give you all a little “Blog 101” lesson. What is a blog? I recently found this definition on the Web site “Wired” and found it sums it up nicely. (slide with this quote on it) "Blog" itself is short for "weblog," which is short for "we blog because we weren't very popular in high school and we're trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people."
  
• You laugh, but I find it almost embarrassingly true. Ahem, at least in my case.
  
• A blog is, for our purposes here at least, is a little bit like an online journal, or a diary. It’s on the Internet, so it’s usually public. Individual blog entries are called posts, and the most recent one usually appears first, so when you read down a page you’re reading backwards in time.
  
• Most blogs have a few features in common. First of all, there’s usually a comment feature. Most bloggers love to get comments, and the feedback you get on something you write can be very validating. Most blogs also feature a blogroll, which is a list of blogs that particular blogger likes or respects or visits often. And for the truly obsessive, you can install a hit counter that lets you know how many people are visiting your blog, and where they are coming from.
  
• People who aren’t familiar with the idea of blogging always ask me what I write about, and my answer is always along the lines of “everything.” I write to tell the stories of my two young sons, of being pregnant with a third, and my thoughts and opinions on being a working Canadian mom in the early part of the 21st century.
  
• Blogging to me is often like reading the best bits of the Saturday paper out loud at the breakfast table. It’s my way of saying, “Hey, did you see this? Did you hear about that? Isn’t it wonderful / outrageous / hilarious? What do you think?”
  
• When I blog, I put my thoughts and experiences up on the Internet, and other people who are inclined to read them can do so – and then they can add their own thoughts via the comment box. Or maybe they get inspired, and write about a similar topic on their own blog. And so the community begets a conversation, and that conversation is public and just about anyone can join in.
  
• So what does blogging have to do with mothering?
  
• Let me tell you about why I think blogging is such a perfect medium for mothers.
  
• A friend of mine who is an amazing scrap-booker once said she sees herself as the ‘family historian’, and I immediately loved this idea. In blogging, I’m able to chronicle the minutia that is the fabric of our lives at this point in time. It's a huge part of blogging for me, sharing in words and pictures and even video clips the little moments that might otherwise be lost... and I don't have to spend a fortune on fancy paper and funky scissors to do it! Marla will talk a little bit more about blogging as art, and the telling of stories.
  
• That's on a very personal level. But blogging can be a very public act. Blogging, and especially mommy blogging, is about community, and about conversation. And those are two things that mothers, especially mothers of very young children, are often desperate for.
  
• We don’t live in a society where mom or an older sister grandma or Auntie Agnes is right there in the house, on site to offer advice and guidance in the scary business of raising a child. We’re largely on our own, often quietly terrified and sure we’re the only ones who feel lost, afraid and alone. We’re desperate for some sort of support system, some kind of external validation, and someone to say, “oh yes, that happened to me, too. Here’s what I did. And we survived.”
  
• As I said, I’m a working mom to two small boys. Often, the only time I see parents of kids my age is at the park after dinner. I’m on a ‘hey, howareya’ nodding acquaintance with a lot of them, but I can’t say I’ve ever swapped potty training tips with any of them, let alone admit to having a particularly hard time of it. Even when my nipples were cracked and bleeding and I thought I was going to die from the stress of breastfeeding my newborn, I couldn’t actually tell anyone that face-to-face. Someone would ask me how I was doing, and I would grit my teeth and say “fine” and suffer in silence.
  
• There’s something about the Internet that makes it easy to bare your soul. When your friend asks, “how are you?” and you’re having a terrible day, it’s very difficult to unload your heavy heart on someone you’re meeting at the coffee shop, or over playgroup. Part of it is stoicism, and part of it is simply that it’s not socially acceptable to say you feel like death from the sleep deprivation and you’re afraid you’re going to hurt your baby if she doesn’t sleep more than two hours in a row. Mothering doesn’t lend itself to the long, far-reaching and soul-searching conversations I remember from the pubs in my less encumbered years.
  
• I’m fundamentally shy. I’m not so great at making new friends. But the Internet facilitates that relationship-building by taking a lot of the pressure off. The online interface gives you courage, so you are braver about exposing yourself and your foibles and your deepest secrets than you might be sitting on a bench at the park. The face that you present through your blog is maybe a little bit more brave than the you at the park. You have a moment to organize your thoughts, so you can almost sound like a rational person, and on a really good day, even string a few deep thoughts together in a row.
  
• As a blogger, you can choose to be completely anonymous and use pseudonyms for yourself and your kids, or you can do like my friend Ann here and use your name in the domain title, or you can choose some combination that you’re comfortable with.
  
• Blogging is about connecting with other people, but in a way I never could while pushing our kids on the swings side-by-side at the park.
  
• It lets you forge connections with like-minded souls whom you might not otherwise meet in other circumstances, given cultural or geographic or even temporal distances. Blogging crosses boundaries, both social and geographic.
  
• So a blog is a kind of an online diary, crossed with a forum, which becomes a community. As a matter of fact, blogging is a natural evolution from the communities created by and for mothers on bulletin boards like babycentre and iVillage. For years now, web-savvy moms have been congregating online in these virtual communities to share information and advice when traditional media like the glossy parenting magazines have either failed them or alienated them or simply failed to address the reality of their lives.
  
• Myself, I was a long-time junkie on a board called IVF Connections, because my first son was conceived through in vitro fertilization, and through that bulletin board I met a bunch of moms virtually who became in-real-life friends – and many of them have blogs of their own now, too.
  
• So blogging is like a continuation of that virtual community, but it’s centred around a particular person, and as the blogger you can control the conversation and how the story is told. It lends itself to a much more in-depth examination of issues and experiences, with an archive of all the conversations that have gone on before.
  
• Now, anybody who has ever tried to have a conversation with a preschooler in the room knows you never really get more than three words strung together in a row, let alone have a meaningful conversation.
  
• Having kids in your life makes time an incredibly valuable commodity, and when you finally manage to string together fifteen minutes for yourself, it might just be at the crack of dawn when you’re up anyway, even though nobody else in the house is awake. You can’t call your best friend at that time – at least, I can’t! – but you can boot up the laptop and surf around the blogosphere for a while.
  
• Blogging is a perfect medium for the multi-tasking mother with a short attention span. You can write up a post in 15 minutes, maybe even at three in the morning while the baby is nursing and you’re typing with one hand, or you can read a few blogs and leave a comment or two. But it’s on your time, and your terms.
  
• That’s one of the first things I loved – one of the things I continue to love – about blogging: that it could be “all about me.” Keeping it has been an indulgence, something I make time for without apology. It’s my “me time”, and I value for that. A chance to connect with others, but also to exercise my mental muscles. A chance to keep up my writing chops, but also to have a discourse at a higher level than, “And how exactly did the spaghetti get inside your brother’s pillow case?”
  
• There’s a lot of cynicism in the blogosphere about “mommy blogs”. Personally, I don’t get that. Blogs give women like me, women who are maybe shy or maybe geographically isolated or maybe stuck in the house or in an office, a lifeline that they might not otherwise have.
  
• You’ll hear a little bit more now from my friends here on some issues that we’re facing in the “momosphere”. But if you only remember one thing about what I’ve said here today, remember that blogging can be a great source of comfort, and of information, for mothers.
  Bloggers, blogging mothers, are having conversations, forging connections, and building communities.
  
• When we blog, and by that I mean the writing and the reading and the commenting on blogs – when we blog, we are not alone.
  

Edited to ever so briefly add: it was amazing. I do not have enough superlatives to tell you how perfect the last two days have been. Expect much gushing and boasting and heaping of affection on my co-panelists, the cool bloggers I finally met in person, the outstanding hospitality, the adorable toddlers, the surprise guests, the shopping.... AMAZING!!!!!!!

Here we go!!

By the time you read this, I'll probably have already picked up the rental car and my road-trip buddy Andrea to head out for our Great Toronto Adventure.

I can't believe the amount of excitement we've packed into less than 24 hours. Ann, Jen, Andrea, Marla and I will be doing our panel discussion at the Motherlode conference from 5 pm to 7 pm. We've been getting some great buzz - check out the poster! Of all the presentations going on, that's US listed right there in the second slot! - and I think it will be a blast.

But that's only the beginning of the weekend. We'll be heading over for a soiree at Jen's place, and then crashing at Marla's place for the night. (You really should go over and read Marla's welcome/warning post. I can hardly wait to finally meet her in person!) There has also been promises of shopping, lattes, and breakfast at a funky local diner. And we will cap off our whirlwind tour by driving madly back to Ottawa in time to tuck our respective babes into bed on Saturday night. (Don't expect much from me on Sunday!)

Wish us luck! Expect locquacious and lovingly detailed updates next week...

I've gone international! Now appearing in... Florida?

You're probably going to laugh at this. You're going to roll your eyes, and you're going to try not to laugh at with me, but you're not going to be able to help yourself.

Guess which newspaper I'm in today?
Give up? The Tampa (!!) Tribune!

Guess which section?
The food (!!) section.

Guess why?
C'mon, guess!
Why, candy swap, of course. It makes perfect sense now, doesn't it?

Last week, a reporter from the Tampa Tribune was thinking about doing an article on candy swaps, and he came across my posts about the candy swap hosted by Andrea earlier this year. He interviewed both Andrea and I, and we're featured in his article, "Gimme Some Sugar", that appears today. Fun, eh? It's not in the online edition, but the paper edition may feature this picture of Tristan and Simon, opening my candy swap bounty from Bethany, that's in the original post. (I tried to copy the photo here, but after two hours - grrrr! - of fighting with Blogger Beta, I give up!)

Maybe it was my Canadian accent, but somehow he transcribed my candy beneficiary Nancy as Melissa. Sorry, Nancy, I really do know your name - honest!!

The interview was fun, as the writer and I compared childhood notes on such favourites as Pop Rocks, Bottle Caps and Fun Dips. But did you know they don't have Mackintosh Toffee in Florida? Scandalous! Maybe it's a Canadian thing? Anyway, the writer was very entertained by the idea of the very satisfying ritual of thwacking your Mack on the table to break it into bite-sized pieces of caramelly joy.

Speaking of childhood fun, please pardon the non-sequiter but I have to tell you about the Christmas present I bought for the boys yesterday online. Shhh!

It's from Cranium, the company that makes Cadoo and Balloon Lagoon and our favourite, Hullabaloo. It's called Super Fort: a 73-piece fort building kit. How cool is that? It comes with foam tubes - some rigid, some bendy - for building the structure, and magnetic connectors. It also has a handful of colourful cloth panels for walls, floors and ceilings, and clips to afix them. It's all designed for little hands, ages four and up. I can hardly wait until Christmas to see them open it up!! I love that feeling, when you know you've found a perfect gift. The Canadian Toy Testing Council agrees - they gave it their highest rating. And best of all? No batteries and no volume switch!

Heck, I guess this resolves the two-beds or bunk-beds question. We'll just throw a couple of pillows and blankets in with the box, and we'll be golden!

Mixed messages

I'm having a good couple of days. Pardon my enthusiasm, but I had to update you on Tristan's school foibles.

You'll remember a couple of weeks ago, we got called in for a parent-teacher confab after a mere eight days of school, causing me to believe we should perhaps stop saving for Tristan's education and instead start saving for bail money.

Yesterday, we got the first 'goal worksheet' back in Tristan's communication folder (because he alternates between a French and an English teacher, he hasn't been back with the other teacher since the week of our conference.) Five goals, five happy faces for five goals achieved. Go Tristan!

And from the department of mixed messages, we also got a lovely little certificate signed by the principal saying Tristan was "Star of the Week" for October 2 through 5. I understand from our daycare provider, who has older children at the school, that this is an honour bestowed upon a student by having the certificate hang in the hallway outside the principal's office for a week, then sent home to the child's beaming parents. I have no idea of the significance of this honour, whether he was nominated by a panel of his peers, or whether he will be able to add it to his curiculum vitae some day, but Tristan was plenty proud and so am I.

And speaking of honours, one of you lovely peeps have nominated me (or rather, nominated blog) for a Canadian Blog Award again this year. I am in great company, with nominating nods - so far - to many of my favourites, including Beanie Baby, MUBAR, Martinis for Milk, Breadcrumbs in the Butter, Bub and Pie, and a peek inside the fishbowl. I'm honoured and touched by your nominations - thanks!

Almost famous

Remember waaaaaay back in early September, when I mentioned that I had been to a blogger meet-up with Andrea and Kerry? I never did get around to writing more about it, but that night there was a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen there, and she was intrigued by our discussions about the free stuff bloggers get (and you know how I love the free stuff) and the agonizing I was doing at that time over running ads on the blog.

Well, this morning the feature she wrote was the cover of the Tech Weekly section, with a giant photograph of Tristan and I, framed in our laptop monitor! How cool is that? I so wish the photograph was in the online edition, because it really is a lovely shot. Maybe I can scan it and show you later on.

The article itself was great. The reporter compared four Ottawa bloggers and our different approaches to blogging for profit. I know one of the other bloggers (Hi David!) and met another one of them at the blogger meet-up. It was a lot of fun to be part of the process, too. While I've had letters to the editor run a few times before, this is the first time I've been part of an actual article.

I had to laugh when I saw she had written, "Postcards from the Mothership provides an intimate look at Donders' life. The federal government employee recently told readers about her pregnancy before she told her bosses." Hmmm, as of this morning I still hadn't gotten around to telling some of those bosses formally yet. You think communications exectives read the paper much? *cringe* Then again, I'm not sure all of them knew about blog, either. (Hi, big bosses!)

I laughed out loud when I read that the reporter, Alexandra, worked in a plug for me. In discussing ads on blogs, she quotes me saying "'Blogging -- for me, at least -- is so very personal that allowing ads on the blog seemed a slippery slop to selling myself and my kids and our personal experiences,' she says" but then continues on with "while pointing out that she'd be willing to consider a book publisher's offer." Random House, Harper Collins, House of Anansi - are you listening?

The best reaction was from Tristan, though. Newspapers have an elevated status around our house already - the boys know nothing happens in the morning until Mommy has read the newspaper. The picture of us is almost a full half-page, and he is absolutely tickled by it - and by the fact that you can see his new-for-school Scooby Doo backpack in the photo! We were both up a few minutes before the rest of the house, so I had time to show it to him before anyone else was up. He practically bowled Beloved over shoving the photo up to his bleary, half-opened eyes, and wouldn't let me take Simon out of his crib until Tristan had positioned the paper just right for optimal viewing.

So, if you're here as a result of the Citizen article, welcome! Pour yourself a coffee and feel free to join the conversation - we're a friendly lot around here. Me, I'll be out looking for extra vanity copies of the paper. For Tristan's baby book, of course.

Edited to add: thanks to Andrea - although I hate to foil her enterpreneurship! - I have this scan of the photo from today. Props to Citizen photographer Ashley Fraser, who took this and about 100 other pictures that day, and was incredibly patient with both Tristan and me!