Leta is staying with my father for a couple of days, and the other night we drove out to his house to drop her off and have dinner together. My stepmother is a fabulous Southern cook and had prepared fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and corn. I thought we'd pour Leta a bowl of Cheerios and call her dinner a success when she suddenly asked for a piece of my stepmother's fried chicken. I had little faith that she would even be able to look at a piece of that chicken and not immediately try to claw her face off as this chicken did not look at all similar to the chicken she has eaten before. Meaning it wasn't in the shape of a dinosaur.

And it was made of actual chicken.

Whenever we eat dinner away from home and people ask what Leta would like to eat we usually say, well, do you have anything made out of a substance that doesn't occur in nature? A bowl of that, please.

Everyone loaded up their plates and then we all bowed our heads to bless the food. I know that some of you will be totally surprised that I participate in this, that I willingly bow my head for a Mormon prayer instead of marching around the table with a picket sign, but I respect my family's beliefs and they respect mine. I bow my head before meals at their houses, and they know that when they come to my house they aren't allowed to come inside until after they have removed their pants.

While our heads were lowered that night, though, I looked up to see Leta making funny faces at me and then looking around to make sure everyone else had their eyes closed. I remember being just a little bit older than she is now, how uptight I was already about being righteous. And one time during a prayer I let my eyes slip open and was immediately struck with a panic that THE LORD WOULD KNOW. And he was right now sending my sleeping bag from the Celestial level of heaven all the way down to the Telestial level where I and all the rapists and murderers and women who wore revealing tank tops would spend the rest of our eternity.

Look at how my four-year-old is already more well-adjusted than I am.

And then she ate her piece of chicken. Every last bite of it. I have a theory about this: a couple of weeks ago Leta came home from preschool and asked if she could have a bowl of mac and cheese. Because I have seen Leta spit a new and unfamiliar food four feet across the room I ignored her requests thinking she had gone temporarily insane. But Jon is either less cynical than I am, or maybe it's because all that ska music he played in the early 90's rattled his already irregular brain, but he went out right then and bought a box of instant mac and cheese. I was all YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS, OUR DAUGHTER WILL NOT EVEN EAT BREAD. And he was all, woman, calm down, I am made of magic, and after waving his hand and chanting a hypnotizing spell, that kid put a noodle in her mouth, I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.

And then she ate mac and cheese every night for a week.

We finally got it out of her that her friend at school always brings mac and cheese to lunch, and that's when I drafted a letter to all the parents of the kids in her school: Hello! You don't know me, but I was wondering if for a small fee you would be willing to pack sushi in your child's lunch box. How about some Pad Thai? Or maybe a coconut curry. We could also start small with a peanut butter sandwich. I'm desperate. Please hold me.

After dinner Leta kept begging me and Jon to leave, so I quickly unpacked her STUFF into a heaping pile in my father's guest bedroom and then gave him the rundown of her daily routine, including the part where he has to tell her a knock knock joke that ends with DONKEY BELLIES at bedtime or she won't be able to sleep. Also, I warned, Leta may start bugging you to agree to to something RIGHT NOW, or SOON, or IN A MINUTE. And even though you know you aren't going to be doing that particular thing until tomorrow it would behoove you to tell her that you agree to her timetable. You must say the words YES, IN A MINUTE. And resist following that with NOW SHUT UP.

My dad looked a little uncomfortable with this arrangement, and I was all, dude, this is not lying. This is called GETTING THROUGH YOUR DAY.

I called to check up on things last night, and my stepmother said that after her bath Leta jumped up, wrapped her arms around my stepmother's neck and whispered I LOVE YOU. Which stunned her because Leta has been prickly once or twice or ALL THE TIME. I told her I think some chemical is released when kids turn four, something that makes them come to terms with the fact that THEY ARE LIVING and they might as well stop resisting it, and yeah, that kid can be wonderful like that.

And then my stepmother asked me what a donkey belly was because she had just spent 30 minutes of her life singing, "Row row row your DONKEY BELLIES! gently down the stream..."

Just got word that the "Today" show segment has been bumped to the 10 o'clock hour tomorrow morning, and I'll most likely be on at 10:30 AM (Eastern Standard Time, although when they run it in syndication it still airs at 10:30 Utah time, don't know what that means for the rest of the country) with Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. Hoo boy! This interview will be a total disappointment if I fail to get Kathy Lee to talk about Al Roker's nipples.

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday May 7) I'm going to be on the "Today" show to discuss the business of (insert ominous voice of death) MOMMY BLOGGING. They tell me my segment will air at 8:30 AM, and that I'll either be talking with Matt Lauer or Meredith Viera, and I love those guys, don't get me wrong, but back when I was eight months pregnant and I'd been reading about techniques I could use to induce labor, I had a particularly vivid dream that involved Al Roker. Here's what I wrote about it in 2004:

Last night I had a dream that Al Roker was demonstrating proper breastfeeding techniques to me and a room full of 18 other pregnant women. He had gigantic nipples and was handling them with an almost unlawful carelessness, just swinging them around and pinching them and mooshing them like little red meat patties. He made sure to warn us that we shouldn't try this at home, not yet anyway, because persistent nipple stimulation has been known to induce labor. And I know I had this dream because I just read about the whole nipple stimulation technique, that there are some doctors who recommend that a pregnant woman past her due date try twiddling her nipples for up to three hours at a time.

Three whole hours of nipple twiddling.

I cannot believe I didn't capitalize that at the time, because when I read that just now my eyes bulged out of my head and I was all THREE WHOLE HOURS OF NIPPLE TWIDDLING? And then I remembered, PREGNANCY IS INSANE.

And yeah, I would just love to sit down with Al Roker and discuss blogging while I have that whole paragraph up there dancing in my brain.

We finally nailed down the time and location for the book signing in New York (Brooklyn) this Wednesday:

Location:
Soda Bar
629 Vanderbilt Ave.
Brooklyn, NY

Time:
Starts at 5:30 PM and will go until almost 8 PM

I know it's not in Manhattan, but on such short notice this was one of the best places we could get. "We" being Sarah Brown's agent, Anne Garrett, someone who doesn't know me or have anything to do with my book. She totally stepped up and arranged the whole thing. I was so grateful to both Sarah and Anne for helping me out in this pinch that I vowed I would name my next child Sarah Anne, even if it's a boy. And I have to agree with Sarah when she said, "That Sarah Anne will get so much pussy." And right now I'm counting down to the email from the cranky reader who CANNOT BELIEVE I just blogged about my hypothetical child's sex life.

Please come say hello even if you couldn't care less about the book (although there will be some copies there if you'd like to pick one up). I'd still love to meet you and challenge you to a game of quarters. Although that's not really a game I perfected in college. The one we always played at BYU was called Let's Have Sex With All Of Our Clothes On. I was a total pro.

Dear Leta,

Tomorrow you turn fifty-one months old. If you are reading these in chronological order you will probably notice that the newsletter for month fifty has gone missing. Yeah, about that. Would you believe me if I told you Coco ate it? You'd have to because Coco eats everything. Just this week she ate both the arms and legs off the new Barbie doll that my mother gave you, and when I found her chewing those limbs I secretly hoped you wouldn't notice. But that's not what happened at all. You noticed immediately and were so enraged that YOU PULLED YOUR OWN HAIR. After several hours of wailing and head-butting the floor you walked up to me, put the legless and armless nub into my hands and said, "Grandmommy is going to be so mad at that dog." And you used a tone that suggested it was less of an observation and more of a warning that Coco might want to draw up a will.

But no, Coco did not eat that specific newsletter. What I could do here is come up with some elaborate excuse for why it wasn't ever written in the first place, but I know you're the type of person who doesn't want to hear all that crap. I got busy. Life sort of turned on its head at the beginning of last month and I just didn't get to it. It was the first time that has ever happened since I first started writing these letters to you at the beginning of 2004, and I apologize. I can't promise that it won't ever happen again, but I have a feeling that if you get arrested in high school for spray-painting a giant four-letter word on the wall of the cafeteria it won't be because month fifty is missing from your newsletters. It will be because your father and I didn't do a good enough job of teaching you how not to get caught. Take my advice now: blame a cheerleader.

This newsletter is going to be a little different and not just in terms of it having to make up for a lost month. A lot has happened in the last few weeks that I feel I should address publicly, and the majority of it is not amusing. Usually I like to spend these paragraphs regaling you with stories of your hysterical antics so that in the future you can read about what a uniquely challenging and funny kid you were, and maybe one day it will explain why your own child screams so much and how it's perfectly normal to daydream about dangling that kid over a pool of hungry sharks. 15 years from now you're going to read this paragraph, here where I tell you that your favorite thing to say is DONKEY BELLIES, and whenever you say knock-knock, and I say who's there, you scream DONKEY BELLIES, and then you gasp for air as the giggles get lodged in your throat, you're going to read this and then call me and go THERE'S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT DONKEY BELLIES. And then you're going to ask me for money.

But I guess there are some people who are very uncomfortable with the fact that I and many other women are writing about our children on our websites. How dare we violate your privacy like this, how dare we endanger you like this, we obviously care more about ad revenue than what this is going to do to your adolescence. And I have been asked countless times if I am at all worried that you will totally resent me for the details I have shared here. Of course you will you resent me. I have no doubt that you will spend years of your life resenting me and being embarrassed that we have the same last name, despite the fact that I have and will spend years of my life writing love letters to you on the Internet. Despite the fact that I have declared to millions of people that you are the most amazing thing that has ever happened to my life.

You will resent me for your curfew and the fact that I will not let you leave the house in that mini-skirt. You will resent me for showing up to your school in my pajama bottoms and for raising my hand in a PTA meeting when I hadn't brushed my hair. You will text message your friends to tell them that I am the most horrible person on the planet because I'm forcing you to study for your exam in the morning. You are going to think that I cannot possibly understand what you are going through, and you will slam the door in my face.

Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it's like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you're going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we're not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

These are the stories of our lives as women and they often include you, yes. Am I endangering you by posting pictures of you? Many people think so, but then they'd have to admit that when I take you to the grocery store I am exposing your face to hundreds of strangers, people who can see what car we drove up in, the license plate number, and the direction we head home. Maybe we shouldn't ever leave the house, otherwise? STRANGERS WILL KNOW WHAT WE LOOK LIKE. Worse? They will know I prefer Tampax to the generic brand.

Am I violating your privacy? If keeping 95 percent of what goes on in your life off limits in terms of what I write on my website, then yes, I am totally invading your privacy. And what about that time I wrote about your poop, aren't you going to be mortified when your classmates read about that in sixth grade? Leta, I stopped writing about your poop many, many months ago, and chances are that all the kids you're going to know in sixth grade will have spent the first three years of their lives shitting their pants, too. Oh wait, THAT'S WHAT HUMANS DO. WHO KNEW.

Finally, I've seen it suggested in my inbox and by various critics online that what we do on our websites is egotistical and exploitative. Some even refer to it as child abuse. I know I am not alone when I say that when I sit down to update my website I do it to connect with other people, I do it to reflect on the absurdity of everyday life with the hope that the people who read it will find similarities in their own routine. I did not know that wanting to be a part of a community qualified as egotism.

Some of our websites make us money, yes, money that puts food on our table, pays for preschool and helps pay for utilities. Sometimes we even use this money to pay for more unnecessary things like computers or manicures or purple ceramic hippos, and this in particular is something people grab hold of to try and twist what we're doing into something gross and ugly. And try as they might, I will not be discouraged from continuing to document the beauty of life with my family or supporting them with an income from doing so. Leta, some people will one day try to convince you that what I've done here is some sort of sickening betrayal of your childhood, and what those people fail to recognize is that I am doing the exact opposite. This is the glorification of your childhood, and even more than that this is a community of women coming together to make each other feel less alone. You are a part of this movement, you and all of the other kids whose mothers are sitting at home right now writing tirelessly about their experiences as mothers, the love and frustration and madness of it all. And I think one day you will look at all of this and pump your fist in the air.

Love,
Mama

Jon and I are going to be in New York City next week for a couple of days, and I'm working with my publisher to try and set up a book signing somewhere in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon (May 7). Four of the contributors live in the area and will also be there to sign books: Alice Bradley, Sarah Brown, Doug French, and Greg Allen.

Once I know all the details I'll let you know. Right now we're just trying to find a place that can host us on such short notice, so we may just end up setting up a table in the middle of Times Square. If you're in New York next Wednesday please come say hello, although I cannot guarantee that Jon and I will actually survive the cab ride from the airport into the city. Last time we were there our cab driver stopped in Queens to shoot a man in an alley, and I had to promise I wouldn't blog about it.

Leta has asked for a snack, so I reach up into a cabinet and grab some chips. Yes, chips. Filled with trans fat, high fructose corn syrup and butter. Sprinkled with tiny flakes of meth. Known to cause homicidal mania. Conveniently packaged in 100 calorie bags.

When I rip open the top of the bag the chips go flying across the kitchen floor, and Leta immediately throws her body over the multitude of scattered pieces to protect them from gunfire or maybe inclement weather.

"COCO IS GOING TO EAT MY CHIPS!" she screams.

"No, she won't," I assure her as I bend down to help her gather up the mess. "I'm not going to let her."

Just then Coco rounds the corner from the living room to the kitchen and makes a mad dash for the buffet of broken chips. I whip around, stretch out my arm with my hand upright and say, "DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, DOG."

"YEAH!" says Leta, "Don't even THINK about it, DOG."

Coco stops, whines and then rolls over in defeat. Leta continues to gather chips and intermittently shoots Coco a menacing glare. Coco makes a few unsuccessful attempts to army crawl toward the treats and then sighs when I yank her leash.

Leta grins with the realization that I am completely on her side. "Mom," she says, "we both know she is totally thinking about it."

INTERNET, GO OUT RIGHT NOW AND GET YOURSELF A FOUR-YEAR-OLD.

There was this one time when I asked a whole bunch of people if they would help me put together a book, some of them close friends, others whose work I had admired for years, and I remember one exchange in particular when this one guy said SURE! and the excitement I experienced was not unlike what I imagine it would feel like to impregnate Angelina Jolie myself.

That book comes out today:

It's called Things I Learned About My Dad (in therapy) and it's a collection of essays about fatherhood from the perspective of fathers, wives, daughters and sons. I've written two of the 17 essays, one about my father and one about Jon. A few weeks ago I gave my father an advance copy of the book with the hope that he would read what I had written, but I didn't say anything to him other than HERE IS MY HEART AND SOUL, DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WILL. I found out a week later that he had taken it home and used it to prop up a wobbly toilet. I like to think that I improved his life by those two inches.

The other authors are Kevin Guilfoile, Matthew Baldwin, Matt LaPlante, Alice Bradley, Doug French, James Griffioen, Greg Allen, Greg Knauss, Maggie Mason, my hot geek husband Jon Armstrong, Leah Peterson, Sarah Brown, Eden Kennedy, Gail Armstrong, and my man in Houston, Bill Farrell. I am eternally indebted to these people for their hard work and cooperation and for making this book such a spectacular collection of emotion: humor, sorrow, frustration, joy, and forgiveness. I won't say which, but one of these essays completely transformed me, and I'm a better person for having read it.

Starting today the book is available at the following retailers:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Powells
Booksense
Kensington Books

On Thursday June 5 I'm going to be doing a signing at a local bookstore called The King's English on 15th East in Salt Lake City. I'll be sure to post more specific details as that date draws near and would encourage everyone to come and say hello even if you don't want to bother with the book. I haven't ever done a local meet and greet and thought this would be the perfect occasion. But be warned, I am known to bite. And suddenly break out into song.

I don't think the publisher is sending me anywhere to do press or signings, but I've had a few requests from readers who wanted to know if they could send me their copy so that I could sign it and then send it back to them. I'm more than happy to do this as long as you include return postage (please send it to the address on my contact page), and what the hell, I'll tuck a little extra something into the envelope. I promise it won't be gross. Maybe.

Finally, I want to thank my editor Danielle Chiotti whose name should be right next to mine on the cover of the book given how much work she did to get this thing out the door. She is a superhero, and I can't thank her enough for hanging in there with me. Also, my agent Betsy Lerner, who has been my tireless advocate for over three years. She has suffered endlessly, and I owe her a beer.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS OVER, THANK GOD. Fly, little book, fly!

The following is a video of Prince covering Radiohead's "Creep" at Coachella over the weekend. It is the audio equivalent of a Reese's peanut butter cup: two great tastes that you didn't think could get any better, and then some genius comes up with the idea to eat them both at the same time. Thom Yorke needs to write an entire album of songs for Prince to chew in his mouth.

(via the BPP)

Leta is pushing a heavy toy down the hallway when the far side of it bumps right into Chuck's back. He's been sleeping on the floor, and although Leta keeps nudging him with the toy he won't move. She finally screams, "CHUCK! MOVE, PLEAAAAAASE!" Isn't that considerate of her to ask so politely.

Chuck thoughtfully considers her request, pulls himself off the floor and steps to the right allowing her plenty of room to pass. She sits there stunned for a second and then muses aloud, "I love Chuck."

No one is more surprised than she is at this realization.