The Economics of Denim.

My inbox stays constantly packed with emails of butts in jeans. Texts of butts in jeans. Questions about butts and jeans. I suppose when one is willing to show the world photos of their own butt in dozens of pairs of jeans in multiple posts over five years, people feel comfortable sharing their own butt […]

The Slippery Slope into Chocoholism.

I discovered chocolate last weekend. Real chocolate. Chocolate like I’ve never even come close to tasting before. And I want to pull you down with me. if you follow me on Twitter, you probably hated me all weekend. (I know this because several of you told me so.) And that’s okay. I would have hated […]

The Reality Test.

Two years ago, I tested Ali’s grasp of reality. It was on a whim while driving down the road after she asked me, “Are fireflies real?” The question made me realize how unrealistic some real things are, and how believable some imaginary things can be. I mean really. A bug whose butt rhythmically lights up? […]

Curry Chicken for the Faint of Heart.

Although I consider myself a somewhat adventurous eater (I’ve eaten raw octopus and liked it,) I do not like Asian food. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Thai, none of it for me, please. Fried Rice is about as far East as I prefer to go. However, when I gave birth to Ali, a member of our […]

How Amazon Turned You into Their Sales Force.

I am not an Amazon hater. They bring me the things I need to my doorstep and keep me from having to haul two small children into the store. I’m also not one to jump on the bandwagon of Facebook privacy complaints. Thanks to five years of blogging, I’ve long since come to terms with […]

For The Budding Car Guy.

Noah’s favorite book in all the world is this one: He has a name for every car on every page, and can quiz me tirelessly on the location of each one of them. The basic idea is that all of the pages are snapshots of one grander layout of rows and rows of cars. And, […]

On Stumbling Into the Sale of a Lifetime.

May 14 2013 Update: The Wish Collection has relocated to a different state, so the Sample Sales are no longer available in Birmingham at this time. I love you guys, because you are the best Life Informants that a girl could wish for. Anytime I have a question, at least a dozen of you have […]

Stepping Stones of Early Readers: What to Read and When.

The past year has contained a magnificent breakthrough in Ali’s reading. At the beginning of the school year, Ali despised reading. We would painfully make it through two pages of a super simple book before she and I were both exhausted. We kept at it, and finally made it to the promised land. I now […]

50 Restaurants in Crappy Photos: Round One.

We usually eat out at least a couple of times a week (if not embarassingly more often) and due to an extreme preference for the atmosphere and the food, almost all of those meals are at local restaurants. Birmingham has an astoundingly robust local dining scene, so there are always plenty of options. But although […]

A Hundred Celebrations.

UPDATE: This year’s Hundredth Day of School Post can be found here. I’ve really been trying to be creative with school this semester, because as we approached the holidays, Ali was completely OVER school. It had gotten boring and predictable, and apparently boring and predictable isn’t fun – who knew? She was ready to drop […]