The Breeders: Why Walk When Crawling Keeps You Closer to Gross Stuff to Put in Your Mouth?

He is his mother's child in so many ways...

The Breeders: My child's first birthday was not #Pinterest worthy.

A year ago I pushed a human being out of my body. Now he (lovingly) smears frosting on my pants. But, it is sugar free frosting. A lovely tasty one in the case of the cake my sister made him. A gloppy mess in the case of the cake that I made. Yes, he had two parties. No, they were not Pinterest worthy. Well, maybe Autie's cake was.

Happy birthday.

The Breeders: Separation Anxiety...for Mama

Next week I have to travel for work. Needless to say I'm a bit anxious about it. Any tips for surviving parental separation anxiety are greatly appreciated. But, don't worry I will fully take advantage of the opportunity to sleep - anxiety will not win out over Ambien.

...and why, yes, of course my son already has a cape....

The Breeders: Achieving key parenting milestones

Adam: What did you write your blog post about this week?

Me: Cheerios and maracas.

Adam: Oh, cool.

Yep, this is the new normal. Read about it over on the Patch.

The Breeders: First Word? Maybe?

From my new favorite blog, Parenting with Crappy Pictures.

I was an English major who maybe took too many semiotics classes. I also have a friend going to school to be a speech pathologist, so I might be over thinking the whole first word thing, but when the first word is just a shortened version of repeated babbling, its hard to tell.

I don't want to shortchange the kid, but I may also be the only mom who was also kind of hoping it would be "dada." It seems only fair considering he spends all day with him.

The Breeders: A Meaningful Mother's Day

Strong Families cards celebrate all kinds of mamas.

My masters thesis examined how women have used the socially accepted role of "mother" to work towards peace. It had a 23 page bibliography.

I refrained from using any footnotes in my recent Patch blog on the origins of Mother's Day and the many organizations using Mother's Day to call attention to maternal and infant mortality the world over.

I also talked about how I can't wait to get handmade cards and macaroni necklaces.

The Breeders: Eat Like a Baby

Another exciting installment in the "things you don't know to expect when you have a baby" files - having a kid means you have to start eating like an adult - or at least wait until after he goes to bed to have brownies.

The Breeders: Forget College, We're Going to Need a Grocery Fund

When my sister was a toddler, the pediatrician assured my mother that babies can live on a tablespoon of solid food a day. My kid, on the other hand, eats more than most adults do for breakfast. I can only imagine the grocery bill when he's in high school. Growing a giant is gonna be expensive.

The Breeders: My Baby Is a Hipster

Check out my post on The Patch about how my child loves vinyl and unlistenable noise pop. Now he just needs a fixie tricycle.

The Breeders: The Hunger Games Might Not Be the Best Date for New Parents

I was more surprised than anyone that I actually didn't hate the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games. I'm a pretty harsh movie critic, especially when it comes to movies based on beloved books. 

The only problem is that I'm a new parent and it is a movie about kids getting slaughtered. Read about my emotionally exhausting movie watching over on the Patch.

The Breeders: The Best Way to Babyproof

Borrow your friend's toddler. Let them loose. Try not to die of a heart attack. Clean up after the mess.

The Breeders: Postpartum is a Bitch

Luckily I live in a time and place where postpartum care and support is available from people who (mostly) know that breastfeeding is hard and depression may be looming. However, none of the books or medical professionals seem to pay attention to or prepare you for one minor detail - creating, carrying around and delivering another human kind of fucks with your body.

Okay not kind of...it really does. And no I'm not just talking about the extra weight you gained to sustain that human, but all the other stuff. The ligaments, muscles and joints that are affected. Maybe 22 year-olds don't have this problem. But let me tell you 32 year-olds do. Thank god I found some people to help me out.

The Breeders: We've Gone Mobile

I'm pretty careful about what pictures of my baby I put on the internet, but seriously...how could I not share this adorableness?

Hear about our adventures in crawling and use of smartphones on the Patch.

The Breeders: So Much for Our Food and Entertainment Budget

This kid is definitely an adventurous extrovert. He loves being out and about. His favorite adventure is going out to eat - not that he gets to eat much (mostly the grains of each ethnic fare, so far) - but, he's okay with that since his favorite thing is watching the wait staff.

Read about how this is blowing our household budget over at the Patch.

The Breeders: Giving the Kid Some Privacy

Years ago, before I went to Austin or we got married we were joking around about how celebrities name their kids crazy things like Apple and we tried to come up with the craziest names we could. We settled on Tractor, for a boy, and Beige for a girl.

The nicknames stuck. Every time we talked about our future kid we referred to him as Tractor. I bought a toy tractor to give to my husband for when I told him I was pregnant. Even our friends caught on. When I was pregnant everyone referred to our future baby as Tractor.

I thought about using it as a pseudonym here, but I figured that people would probably continue to use the nickname in real life so it would defeat the purpose of not telling the entire internet my kid's name. Oddly, the nickname disappeared. No one calls him Tractor. We didn't even get any Tractor themed baby gifts. It seems his personality is bigger than any nicknames that preceded him.

I still haven't come up with a good moniker for him, and I don't plan on sharing his real name, 'cause well the internet can be full of weirdos - no offense.

My recent Patch post talks about keeping the weirdos at bay and also trying not to leave a totally embarrassing internet legacy before the kid can have a say about it.

The Breeders: The Sandbox. The Point of No Return

Another point in the Plus column for our town - the parks are so well maintained at least we don't have to worry about needles and cat poop.

The Breeders: The Best and Worst Part About Being a Working Mom

I can make my kid happier than he has ever been and crush his soul all in the span of five seconds.

That won't screw with your psyche at all...

The Breeders: My Husband's Best Parenting Tip

Speaking of increments of time, my most recent post on The Patch is about how my husband is a genius and came up with a super simple way to keep us sane.

Counting. 

No, really. That's it.

The Breeders: Sorry, Kitty. You're Not the Baby Anymore

Yes, I wrote about my cat. Yes, I referred to my cat as a "big brother."Evidently this is a thing that happens when you are a mommy blogger blogger that happens to have a baby and also a cat.

The Breeders: No Presents for Baby's 1st Christmas

Yep, we did not buy our child any gifts this Christmas. We're taking the opportunity to make his first Christmas about more than a butt-load of gifts delivered by a jolly home intruder.

Besides, the kid is six months old. Yesterday, his favorite toy was a dishtowel.