tiffany's spot

Lately Jordan has been silly about certain things. In the mornings when I ask her to get dressed she dawdles around forever without actually dressing herself. When I urge her to hurry up she asks for help. Jordan has been dressing, undressing, and changing herself from outfit to outfit since she was eighteen months old. She doesn't need help. The other morning I was trying to get the kids ready to take Jordan to nursery school. She was sitting in her room naked and playing with random toys. I had told her a few times already to get dressed because we were going to be late. She dawdled. She resisted. I told her that I was coming back in five minutes and if she wasn't getting dressed there would be trouble. I came in a few minutes later and she was sitting on the floor, still naked, and crying. She said she needed help. She hadn't put on socks or underwear or anything. "Jordan, you've been dressing yourself for a long long time. I know you don't need help. Do you...

Yesterday I was on the phone and making lunch when the kids started scrapping. Isn't that always when they act up? I tried to shush them, but soon Jordan was shrieking because Tennyson had bitten her. I hung up the phone and gave him a smack on the bottom. He ran down the hall crying and hid in my room. Not so easy to hide when you're crying. Jordan scurried off to the living room. A minute later I went in to talk to Jordan. I figured (as saintly as she is) that she may not be innocent either. "Why did Tennyson bite you?" "Because I punched him." "Do you think that was nice?" "No." "Maybe you should go and tell Tennyson sorry and see if he's okay." " Ok ." She ran down the hall and I went back to making lunch. I could hear them in my room. "Tennyson, I'm sorry I punched you," Jordan said. "That's okay. I'm sorry I bited you." Then there was a pause, and I figured they were hugging. ...

I just started reading this new blog. It's http://offcamerawithtrish.blogspot.com/ . She's an amazing writer (probably because she's a reporter) and her stories about her family and self are fantastic! Check it out.

Writing a novel is kind of hard. Especially since I don't really have an outline and I don't really know what's going to happen next. You've probably all noticed by now that I stick a whole bunch of dialogue in there just to use up some words (and make fun of Steven, just a little). Then there's the writer's block. Then there's writing about my husband. I was trucking along until we had a little tiff the other day and then I felt all grumpy towards him. You know how hard it is to write cute, funny, not-to-mean stuff about your husband when you're a little grumpy at him? It's tough. Maybe tonight he'll bring me flowers and the novel will be back on track. Just a friendly reminder: The novel is supposed to be bad. That's its job. It's not about being good. So as you're reading it, don't think "gee, good thing this isn't her profession," because if I was writing a real novel, which I'm not it would (hopefully) not...

I'm changing my profile picture. I know, the kids are cute. My facebook picture is a picture of Jordan. I got thinking - although right now my biggest role in my life is "mother", I am still "Tiffany". I shall not be dwarfed. Not that it's anything against being a mother. Not at all. I just think that my identity should prevail. Isn't that a gift you can give your kids? I think so. I think it's cool that my own mom is a person, I'm going to be one too. *** I had emotional melt-down last night. Remember the ten days of illness in my home? Well that was followed by Steven trying to fix a leaky faucet. Before I continue, no, Steven is not actually training to be a plumber. He's training for a heating and cooling technician. It's actually quite different. So the fact that he's been somewhat unsuccessful in his attempt to fix that faucet has nothing to do with his profession. We bought a new faucet for the bathroom. He installed it. He so...

This has been a crazy week. Or, last week I guess. The Thursday before Halloween, Jordan threw up. It was about 8 o'clock at night. She didn't stop until 4 in the morning. Then Tennyson threw up once on Halloween morning. Then on Sunday night it was my turn. In the midst of all this, Mitchell got pretty sick. He had a heck of a nasty cough and runny nose, and I realized he was (and still is) cutting four teeth all at once. Last Tuesday, around noon I noticed he felt a little hotter. I'd been keeping an eye on his temperature because of all this flu stuff. I checked it again. It was 40.2. I did it again to make sure and it was the same. The day before he had a 5 hour nap, and that morning he had fallen asleep again. He looked terrible. When his temperature spiked I panicked and took him to emergency. They found that he had an ear infection and sent us home with a prescription for antibiotics and instructions to give him lots of tylenol for his fever. The next day his tem...

Okay, I'm going to write the novel. Not "a" novel, but "the" novel. It's pretty dumb, hopefully a little funny. It doesn't matter. The whole point is to get to 50,000 words before the end of November. The quality of the story is really a non-issue. Editing is not permitted. If you'd like to check it out, go here . I'm not going to worry about chapters, but I think I will post when I hit around 2000 words, just to keep it manageable! I just copied over the first chunk. All my formatting (you know, indents, spacing) disappeared. I'm going to just leave it. If I reformat everything as I move it over here I'll never get it done. My apologies.

Did you see my last post? I copied the info from NaNoWriMo. I'm going to do it this year. I have a big idea. It's going to be stupid, hopefully funny, and probably very bad. If you're nice to me I might even share it with you.

What is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. As you spend November wr...