“Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson."

Oh, funny. An article about women ordering steak in the NY Times to change their image.

I'm not quite sure of the point of the piece, but man, did it have some funny quotes.

I hope he gets a little work done before filming.

Chris Noth to return as Mr. Big.

Don't get me wrong. It's great that Noth is going to be in the big screen version of Sex and the City. No one else could be Mr. Big.

But since his stint, he's let his hair go gray and his belly go wide and he needs to tighten things up a little so we don't protest (too much) when Carrie puts up with all of his bullshit.

(And as an aside, if they do end up doing the Carrie/Big wedding in this movie, please don't let it be the big cheesy ending for the film. Please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease).

A little down.

Munchkin had another visit with the Developmental Nazis today. And the speech-language pathologist said that he presented just like a kid with significant hearing loss. So we're going to have his hearing checked with an audiologist next week.

I'm both relieved and annoyed. Relieved because it's probably not something neurological, not something that we can't pinpoint and help.

But, dear readers, I have wondered about his hearing since he was about 6 months old. I have stated my concerns to friends, family, pediatricians and specialists. They all told me I was crazy and would not schedule a hearing test. During the first visit from the developmental nazis at our last duty station, they didn't even bother to send a speech-language pathologist to evaluate him. They sent a physical therapist and developmental psychologist intead. They also kept suggesting it could be autism. Don't get me started.

Only once he turned two did someone finally listen and send us to an ENT. Hence the adenoid removal.

But now the adenoids are gone and he's still having some trouble hearing.

I feel guilty. I feel like I should have pushed harder. I know hindsight is always 20/20 but maybe if I had stamped my feet a little louder, intervention could have happened earlier. Maybe we wouldn't be at this point. I don't know.

But I'll tell you one thing, next week can't happen fast enough.

Soldiers' Angels Challenge.

The call has gone out for Military and Military Spouse bloggers to try and get 5 readers out there to register for Soldiers' Angels. If you do register, but "Non-Essential Equipment made me do it!" in the comments section.

It's a worthy cause. Go ahead and do it!

Shiny, happy people.

Everybody says that you take millions of photos of your first kid. And they were right. Poor kid probably thought I had a camera for a face for the first 12 months of his life.

But then Munchkin went mobile.

And since then, between him reaching for the camera to press the buttons or racing towards mortal peril as I try to frame the perfect shot, the photo ops have been few and far between.

And people, there have been serious complaints. I never knew grandmothers could be so damn cranky when they are forced to go a few days without new grandbaby photos. Think about the old days people! You might have had to go months! Years, even! Give the mother of a toddler a break, please!

So to quell the screaming hordes, I've been trying harder to pick up the camera, even when I know that doing so is just going to result in my having to leave it in an unsecure place as I go chasing after my kid.

But today, for whatever reason, it was the perfect opportunity to take Munchkin's picture. Despite outdoor antics and eating lunch with a spoon, his shirt remained (mostly) clean, his face didn't have any discernible scratches or food bits and he was sitting still on the couch giving me the cutest, sweetest little boy smile EVAH.

And so I picked up the camera and told him to say, "Cheese!" A few flashes of light, the tell-tale clicks of the shutter and I had not one but several photos of my two-year-old in this near perfect, totally unheard of state.

But then I looked at the photos.

Somehow, someway, every time I said cheese, he made this weird, totally wacked out grimace face. Not the smile I had seen on his face before I got the shot. The little monster had done funny faces ON PURPOSE. It's at moments like these that even though he is the spitting image of his father, I so know he is mostly mine.

The Grandmas are not only getting these photos emailed but embossed and framed.

Zapped by the good idea fairy.

You know when you are in a meeting to plan some activity or event and instead of focusing on the task at hand, the people in the room start suggesting good ideas? You know, echelons-above-reality type ideas that would be really great but such a pain in the ass to implement? And those ideas -- though, great, really! -- totally take away from the whole point of the meeting which is to simplify that original activity or event by delegating pieces to make actually possible to go away and implement?

You know what I'm talking about? It's what my husband calls "attack of the good idea fairy." And I sat through 3 hours of it today as we attempted to plan what should have been a totally mundane bake sale.

Somehow, the simple act of discussing what kind of baked goods to assign to each group became a discussion of the potential of helium balloon sales, cookie decoration contests, funnel cake machines and a doggie and/or child dress-up parade (you know, because we don't want to put off those without kids). I know there was more inanity but honestly, I started zoning out when someone had to talk about the Darth Vader costume they had for their Westie. Otherwise, I think I might have gone postal and beaten someone to death with their fundraising idea book.

I tried to rein folks in. I did. I pointed out that with limited time, it would probably be better to focus our efforts on excelling in one task than stretching ourselves and doing a shoddy job of several. But it was too late. The good idea fairy had tapped my compatriots with her magic wand, leaving them with visions of balloon animals and face painting dancing in their heads. And frankly, any argument made up of reason stood no chance.

There are days when I really, really wonder what I'm doing in the FRG.

Another study to make Mommies feel bad.

Baby Einstein not so smart after all.

And, of course, my kid loves those damn videos. He will talk back to them where he won't to me. *sigh* It's not that I thought they were the brain boosters that some people have claimed but they weren't violent cartoons, they don't have questionable advertising and they at least introduce classical music and art.

Is there anything I'm doing that won't totally fuck my kid up? Sometimes I seriously wonder.

Doing my bit for the procrastination effort.

While I wait on a source to get back to me with some more background information for a story I'm doing, I could have organized my notes, put together quotes from my other sources or gotten to work on my next story. I could have.

I also could have snaked my drains.

Instead, I was the happy recipient of a cardboard box from Barnes and Noble today. A box of books from a gift card that I found in one of the move boxes. Sure, the card probably belonged to my husband. But he didn't use it and if someone isn't willing to help unpack those pesky office boxes, finders keepers, lazy-men-who-leave-all-unpacking-to-their-wives weepers.

So since it was a rainy day, I figured I'd just pick up one of the books and skim the first few pages -- Laura Lippman's "What the Dead Know." It's the story of a decades old abduction of two sisters, Sunny and Heather Bethany, and a woman, caught leaving the scene of a car accident, saying that she is Heather, the younger of the two sisters. But something is not quite right and the story, told both in the year of the abduction and in the present, tries to unravel is she who she says she is?

I was not able to put it down until I turned the last page.

I should probably hide the rest of the book shipment until I finish this story. But if any of the others are as good as this one, I'm going to have a hard time doing so.

What does ready really mean?

This is a bit of a shameless trawl, but I'm writing an article for a national parenting magazine about being "ready" to have kids. For it, I'm looking for some sage tips from all the Mamas (Daddies, too!) out there on how to best get ready.

Anyone interested in sharing their own advice?

Deadlines are our friends.

With this sage piece of advice running as my new mantra (thanks, Lee Anne!), I'm trying to get everything done.

• Go through Tri-Care nightmare bureaucracy to set up an appointment to have Munchkin's hearing tested AGAIN. Check.
• Schedule follow-on developmental nazi visit. Check.
• Get the car serviced. Check.
• Clean the kitchen. Check.
• Cook some meals for the rest of the week. Check.
• Go out and buy a few bottles of wine for the house. A house devoid of wine might be a total catastrophe (thanks again, Lee Anne!). Check.
• Find something, anything else do do besides the work I'm actually getting paid for. (And now that I'm thinking about it, the lawn could really use a mow). Check.
• Finish three articles by Friday. Ummm, well, getting there. Sort of.