In 2004, an essay I wrote was one of 50 published in a book called MoveOn’s 50 Ways To Love Your Country: How To Find Your Political Voice And Become A Catalyst For Change. It’s a pretty handy little book, with lots of fun ideas for getting involved no matter where you fall on the political spectrum.

This has been my closest brush with literary fame, so I like to bring it up as often as possible. I did so just today.

“Kelly, how do you type that e with an accent?”

“Gosh, that reminds me of that time I was typing an essay of mine, which was 1 of 50 selected from thousands to be published in a bestselling book. And did I ever tell you about how Al Gore—you know, the Nobel Peace Prize winner—also wrote a piece for that book?”

A couple months after the book came out, the publisher called to ask if I’d record my essay for the audio version. I don’t particularly like my voice, but do you think I’d pass up an opportunity to wallow even deeper in my faux fame?

As payment for my oh-so-gifted voice work, the publisher sent me some of the audio books. Lots of them. They are currently sitting in a box in my home office. FOUR years later.

I’m sick of looking at that damn box. And they’re certainly not doing any good for the world by sitting in my office not getting listened to by any living soul. So last week I was giving that box the hairy eyeball, and I said to myself, “Self, you should set those audio books free. And it will give you more opportunities to refer to your literary stardom, and that is always A Good Thing.”

Just Get to the Free Stuff, Lady
If you want a free audio version of MoveOn’s 50 Ways To Love Your Country, this is how you enter to win:

1. Submit a comment on this post.
2. In your comment, convince me that you’re going to vote in the upcoming election.

Tell me where your polling place is—a church, a school, a grocery store? (You can look it up on Google Maps if you’re not sure.) Tell me what kind of ballots your county uses. Tell me that it’s your first time but for real, you promise you really are going to vote. I don’t care what you do to convince me, just do it. Because if you’re not going to vote, you obviously don’t love your country so what good is this book gonna do you anyway?

I might give away 1 book, or I might give away 20. I don’t know yet. So wow me with your comments!

The Fine Print

• US residents only, please.
• I’ll randomly draw the winners on Saturday.
• I’ll pay the shipping.

More Free Stuff
If you like this whole comment-and-enter-to-win gig, you’ll want to check out Bloggy Giveaways for a list of oodles of giveaways going on this week.

This year, I’m doing NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it happens in November every year. To participate, you commit to writing a 50,000-word novel, from scratch, in one month. Getting through the first draft is the hardest part for most people (myself included), so NaNoWriMo harnesses the power of peer pressure and builds on the fact that misery loves company.

Considering I haven’t even completed my last two once-a-week writing assignments for my writer mamas group, I’m feeling pretty nervous about having committed to writing 1,667 words a day for 30 days in a row.

When you sign up for NaNoWriMo, you get an email with some tips, one of which is:

Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

So here I am. Consider this an invitation to ask me how it’s going in November and to mock me if I say I’ve fallen behind.

Here are some of the excuses you might hear from me and some ideas for what you can say to get me back on track:

• I have an 8-month-old, so back off!
  You can gently remind me that lots of moms have found the time to fit in NaNoWriMo, and that not all of them have such supportive partners so why the hell can’t I find 90 minutes in the day to sit my lazy ass down and write?
• I’m tired. Waa.
  Aren’t you always tired? And don’t you always make time to do other useless crap—check Facebook, read blogs, check your email a million times a day? Just cut the useless crap for a month.
• This novel really sucks. Nobody will want to read it.
  You’re right. Nobody will want to read your shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott would say. Everybody’s first draft sucks—even Irving, Atwood, Kingsolver. But you’ll never get to the good stuff that comes later if you don’t get. that. first. draft. done. first.

But do you know what would really help me?

Do NaNoWriMo with me!

C’mon! It’ll be fun! And when we’re old and gray and reveling in our literary stardom, we’ll look back on November 2008 fondly. It’s going to suck as we’re actually going through it next month, but don’t think about that. Think about after November. Think about us sitting on the back deck, margarita in one hand and our published work of genius in the other. What have you got to lose?

I was walking to a meeting today, and I passed by a sign that said “Dessert Sale.” I love me a good dose of sugar, so I stopped to read the sign.

Turns out a group of employees were doing the bake sale to raise money. An employee’s nephew was just born with a kidney condition that caused one kidney to fail. The other kidney might fail too, but the little boy’s mother doesn’t have health insurance and so can’t afford the tests or procedures he needs.

Bake sales for health care. Cuz that makes sense.

Arundhati Roy says “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Well, she’s not coming fast enough, dammit. I bet she wouldn’t mind a little help getting where she’s going.

So do me a favor—no, do that little boy a favor—and get thee to a voting booth on November 4th.

Title: All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
Author: Janelle Brown
Category: Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: Mom Janice, 20-something daughter Margaret, and 14-year-old daughter Lizzie come together as each of them deals with her own personal crisis—a divorce, crushing debt, the consequences of trying to earn popularity.

Review: I read this book on the recommendation of an employee at BookPeople, my favorite Austin bookstore. And if you think the cover looks yummy, just wait til you get a taste of what’s inside!

The book alternates point of view among the three main characters, and I found myself most looking forward to the 20-something daughter’s sections. I’m no longer 20-something (sigh) but I identified with her character most of all. She grew up in Quintessential Suburbia (Plano, anyone?) but developed into a feminist, liberal woman with aspirations of success in the publishing world. Hmm.

Even though I was drawn to that one character, I loved all the main characters and could see myself in each of them.

This is one of those books that made me into Bad Mommy because I couldn’t resist the temptation to sneak a passage here and there while “playing” with Abby. (It’s good for her to see me reading books, right?)

Title: Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk
Author: Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: Two child development experts explain how you can teach your baby sign language. Baby sign language helps babies express their needs and emotions before they can talk, resulting in fewer tantrums and a stronger relationship with their parents.

Review: This book provides a more robust introduction to baby sign language than a book I previously reviewed on this topic, Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants before They Can Speak.

I especially appreciated the easy-to-digest “Ten Steps to Success” in this book:

1. Start with just a few signs
2. Always use the baby sign and word together
3. Repeat the sign and word several times
4. Point to the object when possible
5. When necessary, gently guide your child’s hands in making the sign
6. Make baby signing a regular part of your day
7. Watch for opportunities to model the signs
8. Be flexible and watch for your baby’s own sign creations
9. Be patient!
10. Remember, make learning fun

However, the sign illustrations were much clearer and more detailed in Sign with Your Baby. But I’m finding the Baby Hands Productions video dictionary of signs more helpful than illustrations anyway.

One part of Baby Signs did not sit well with me, but it’s just one paragraph out of the whole book. The authors recommend the “Baby Signs Video for Babies” as a way to teach babies more signs, then go on to say (emphasis mine):

“Of course, extensive video watching by very young children is not a good idea. However, chosen carefully, videos produced specifically for babies and toddlers can be beneficial.”

But they don’t reference any research to support this claim. I’ve never come across any research indicating that TV watching by babies and toddlers has any lasting positive effects. In fact, I read the opposite in Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think And What We Can Do About It—research quoted there suggests TV watching before a child learns to read teaches them passive learning habits that can be detrimental in all their future learning experiences.

The authors are generally diligent about referencing research to support their claims, but here I think they could have done a much better job. (The cynical side of me thinks they might have vagued up the supporting arguments because they have a video they’re trying to sell.)

But that is just one paragraph out of the whole book, so I probably just need to let it go! This book is clear and well-written, and I just ordered a copy to own from PaperBackSwap.

Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers all around the world are talking about the issue of poverty. I fully intended to post this earlier today, but Abby was on a napping strike so that made it difficult to get my work done, let alone a blog post. Better late than never though, right?

When I first learned about Blog Action Day last week, I started thinking about how I could participate. What could I say about poverty?

I don’t know anyone who’s poor. I don’t have any personal experience interacting with the poor on a regular basis. I drive by the panhandlers at Burnet & 183 every day, but I don’t know them. And the only time I ever talk to them is on Christmas Day when we drive around handing out sacks of food and hot apple cider.

Seeing
One day while I was pregnant with Abby, I was sitting at the Burnet & 183 light. I usually try not to make eye contact with panhandlers, but on this particular day it was a woman who had the same body type as my sister. So I looked. I saw this woman. I saw her dirty clothes and holey shoes and her carrying her whole life in a backpack.

And Abby moved.

My daughter moved in my belly, and I realized that not long ago, this woman too had been in someone’s belly.

She was a baby once.

Two Paths
This woman came into the world the same way I did, but she’s on a street corner and I’m in a dependable car on my way to a job with health benefits and a 401(k) and stock options. How is it possible that we both started life in the same way, but she’s begging strangers for money?

But wait. Did we start life in the same way? Was this woman born into a middle-class home in an affluent school district? Did her mother have a good-paying job, or did she have to work 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet? Was this woman born healthy? Did she always have access to healthy food growing up, or did she go to bed some nights with a grumbling stomach? And when she woke up to go to school in the morning, was her stomach still grumbling? Did she have to sit through a spelling test or a math drill and try to pretend her tiny little body wasn’t screaming for nourishment?

What Abby Did
These are the questions that Abby made me think about. And I won’t lie—I didn’t like the feeling. I didn’t like thinking about that woman as a baby, as a child. Because it made me care.

Who knows—maybe this woman didn’t have a hard childhood. Maybe she caught a tough break as an adult. Or maybe she made some bad choices—drugs, alcohol, staying in an abusive relationship.

But it no longer matters to me why that woman was on the street corner. Even today, I can’t shake the image of her as a tiny little baby with chubby little legs and a toothless grin. I can’t see her as less than a person.

So Now What?
So if this woman is no longer invisible to me, if I can’t look through her, what does that mean for me?

Look, I give money. I give time. Maybe not to this cause specifically, but how am I supposed to fit in yet another issue? My work-home-community balance has the structural integrity of a house of cards. Trying to add one more thing could very well bring it all crashing down.

But the only other option is to do nothing. Am I okay with that? Am I okay with ignoring those people in pain, in need—people who just need a helping hand to get back on their own two feet? People who were once babies like Abby?

And I decided: No, I am not okay with doing nothing. But my time is limited these days, so as soon as I click the publish button for this post, I will make a financial donation to an organization that works to end poverty.

If you’d like to learn more about what you can do, check out this list of 88 ways to do something about poverty. Some of them are silly, but at the very least they’ll get you thinking about small ways you can contribute to ending poverty.

Title: Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love
Author: Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 5/5
Summary: Two professors of psychology summarize research about how babies’ minds develop, then suggest ways of incorporating brain-building games into your baby’s life.

Review: This book is similar to another book I read this year: What’s Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life.

Although I enjoyed What’s Going on in There?, I loved Baby Minds because it focused more on what you can do to help your baby’s brain grow. And not in a baby-flashcards sort of way, either. The games they suggest are fun and easy to incorporate into your routine. For example, they recommend modeling some pretend play starting at around 6 months to foster creativity. So we’ve instituted a 3:00 Puppet Show in our house. Abby loves it of course, but so do I! 3:00 is about the time I start counting down the minutes til Erik gets home from work so it takes my mind off the clock for a bit.

I also preferred how this book summarized the relevant research studies in an accessible way. The research they highlighted made me that much more motivated to try the corresponding games. And this book was much lighter on the biological details of development, which I didn’t mind at all considering those were the parts of What’s Going on in There? I found myself skimming.

Both books had needed reminders to parents that there’s no way to be a “perfect parent.” The message in Baby Minds is: Just do what works for you, and don’t stress out if you’re not doing every single game they recommend because every single game won’t work for everyone.

This book also has a handy list of all the games at the back, which I find myself using a lot lately. On the weekdays when I’m at home with Abby all day, I use up all my tricks by the early afternoon—we read books, we take a walk, we have a tickle fest, I feed her solid food. Then I’m bored and she’s bored, and that’s not good. So the list at the back is helpful for jogging my memory about other things we can do together that will be fun for both of us. In fact, that’s exactly how the 3:00 Puppet Show came into existence!

We took Abby to the Austin Zoo today. They have animals rescued from ill-equipped “roadside zoos” and from silly people who think they can keep a pet tiger—its full name is actually “Austin Zoo and Animal Sanctuary.” They also have animals like goats, sheep, and potbellied pigs. A weird zoo for a weird town.

The African lions were amazing. It felt like we could have reached out and touched them! I got a short movie of this one lion dude who kept pacing back and forth, back and forth in front of the cage opening while a zoo staff member scrubbed out the cage. I think he was hungry.

But then he stopped pacing, and I stopped filming because, well, a frickin’ LION was coming towards me and about to ROAR in my face. Put yourself in my shoes when you’re watching and try to decide if you would have flinched too, or if I’m just a scaredy cat.

From Videos

Still, I really wish I had kept filming. Because after he roared at us, he turned around, raised his tail, and shot a steady stream of LION PISS right at Erik!!! OMG. I almost died laughing. Yes, Erik was holding Abby at the time, and yes, she appeared to escape the lion piss. And Erik seemed pretty lucky too, with only a few splatters on his shorts, which he promptly changed when we got home.

Then we ran some errands later on, and we kept smelling something rank. It took probably too long for us to realize it was remnants of lion piss somewhere on Erik. Mmm.

For the almost 3 years we’ve lived in our neighborhood, this house has proudly displayed the ten commandments on a yard sign. Who knows how long it was up before we moved here.

But check out what Abby and I snagged a shot of during our morning walk today.

Hell yeah, Texans for Obama!

Other parents will probably look at this and be like “So what?” But this is for the grandmas and the friends who don’t have kids.

Be sure to keep an ear out for the newest sound in her repertoire. We call it “Peacock.”

From Videos