Posts from — August 2009

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1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Weebles Wobblog (open adoption, mindfulness, perfect moments)
3. Elana’s Musings (twins, parenting, randomness)
4. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, crafts)
5. Baby Smiling In Back Seat (twin pregnancy, infertility, pottery)
6. Our Surrogacy Adventure (ed recipient, surrogacy, life)
7. In Due Time (infertility, pcos, life)
8. Making Me Mom (mfi, iui, faith)
9. Not Knocked Up With Sprog (infertility, loss, hope)
10. eye heart internet (ivf, france, expat)
11. The Pitter-Patter (ttc, mfi, marrakech)
12. Life Happens When You’re Making Other Plans (faith, family, IVF)
13. Hope and Dreams for Us (infertility, taking a break, life)
14. Rolling Around In My Head (disability, life lessons)
15. Can I Get Some Sugar with These Lemons? (endometriosis, infertility, IVF)
16. The Mind of ~Ifer (random, marriage, thoughts)
17. Once an Infertile (parenting after infertility, endo, life)
18. In G-d’s Hands (infertility, pcos, faith)
19. Conception Deception (mfi, ivf)
20. Endo-a-Go-Go (donor egg, ivf)
21. Body Diaries by Lucy (pcos, if, ivf)
22. PCOS SOS (pcos, infertility, ttc)
23. No, I’m Not Pregnant, Just Fat (azoospermia pcos re)
24. The Yerkes Life (ivf, life, faith)
25. No Lingerie Here… (ttc after mc, weight loss w/pcos, everyday life)
26. Babymaking 101 (pregnancy loss, partial mole, waiting to try again)
27. Infertility and Me (male factor infetility)
28. Sticky Feet (twins, parenting, toddler)
29. Infertili- T & A (IVF, waiting, sass)
30. A Fifth Season (life, loss, family)
31. IF You Only Knew (tubal infertility, family, ttc)
32. The Mis- Adventures of a Modern Day Farmer’s Wife (PCOS, farming, infertility)
33. Venting Vagina (ttc, infertility, iui)
34. Communique (life, infertility, ART)
35. Return to Innocence (infertility, PPD, PCOS)
36. Our Journey, but not our plan (ivf, miscarriage, LAP)
37. IF Crossroads (injects IUI, depression, endo)
38. Wishing4One (ivf, waiting, egypt)
39. Within Reach (infertility, music, random)
40. Blue Gingham Jumpers (infant after PCOS, infertility)
41. Three is a Magic Number (varicocele, the beginning)
42. All Things Griffin (donor IUI, 2WW, infertility)
43. Ambivalent Womb (ivf, male factor)
44. A Woman My Age (open adoption, infertility, life)
45. The Baby Makin Chronicles (pregnancy after m
    iscarriage, life, preparation)
46. Our Someday Family (TTC, MFI, early IF)
47. CD1 Again (infertility, ovulation, periods)
48. Whatever He Says (life, humour, faith)
49. Trustee Tracks (education, parenting, special needs)
50. Mindful Meandering (FET, infertility, recurrent miscarriage)
51. A + B, Waiting for C (if, clomid, today’s distractions)
52. Confessions Of A College Angel (random, college life, hotel ramblings)
53. TTC is Not Easy (conception, weight, marriage)
54. Everyone Else But Me (ICSI, ectopic pregnancies, future)
55. Ninapintasantamaria’s Blog (life, pregnancy, snark)
56. Rottweilers Ate My Laptop (rottweilers, technology, life)
57. All Aboard the Pity Boat (infertility, running, life)
58. A Virtual Hobby Store and Coffee Shop (news, food, music)
59. An Infertile Blog (infertility, miscarriage, PCOS)
60. Learning To Let Go (infertility, BFP, anxiety)
61. Fertility Foibles (infertility, humor, adoption)
62. Yes, We’re Parents (parenthood after IF, ttc#2 w/ IF, humor)
63. A Greater Yes (embryo adoption,, infertility)
64. We got hitched. We bought the 4 bedroom house. Now what??? (pregnancy, miscarriage, randomness)
65. (In)fertile Myrtle (IVF, beta, infertility)
66. A Run For My Money (mental health, parenting after infertility)
67. Slice of Pie (ivf, travel, second opinions)
68. Becoming Whole (emotional abuse recovery, uncertain family-building future, ponderings)
69. Will Not Work for Baby (infertility, ivf, taking a break)
70. Musings of a Wannabe Mommy (IVF, hopefulness, feelings)
71. Circus Children (life, love, infertility)
72. Mis(sed)conception (infertility, life, marriage)
73. One Little Pink Line Short of Sheer Bliss (mfi, ttc break, marriage)
74. Infertility and Me (ivf, ttc, infertility)
75. What Wuz I Saying? (kids, adoption, life)
76. Queen Wilhelmina (life, pregnant after infertility with an incompetent cervix)
77. The Conceivable Future (RPL, infertility, IVF)
78. Thoughts from an Overwrought Mind (life, infertility, ivf)
79. Looking for my Keys (infertility, special needs parenting)
80. Justamere IVF (parenting after IVF)
81. Busted Tube: Adventures in Infertility (ttc, pregnancy after loss, funny stuff)
82. Waiting on baby Paramore (miscarriage, IUI, faith)
83. My Infertility Journey (IVF/ICSI, male facter, PCOS)
84. Teddy Lifeslurper, ttc (humour, IVF, ART)
85. Wheresmy2lines (donor eggs, pcos, life)
86. Chasing That Dream (hysterectomy, endometriosis, adoption)
87. Wistfulgirl’s World (pcos, infertility, random)
88. The Secret Life of Sass and Lex (endo, ivf, weight-loss)
89. FET Accompli (surrogacy, hope, expecting)
90. Ova-Ez (babies, love, life)
91. All My Peccadilloes (MFI, dIUI, waiting)
92. Sparkly Things Distract Me (40+, whats next?)
93. Donor Eggs Journey (donor eggs, IVF, medical tourism)
94. ~Baby Manatee~ (pregnancy, life, randomness)
95. Wandering Wonderment (mama-dom, student-dom, dumb-dom)
96. Adding To The Pack (iui, mfi, pcos)
97. Creating a Family (adoption, infertility, adoptive parenting)
98. Two Is A Family (adoption, life, humor)
99. Adventures in Glass (IVF, life, barely PG)
100. Invivo (infertile, pregnant, life)
101. Getting There (infertility, moving on, adoption)
102. Cheryllookingforward (pregnancy after loss)
103. Heeeeere Storkey, Storkey! (twins, life, FET)
104. Hubby, baby and me…would make 3 (infertility, pcos, life)
105. Meepit On Parade (infertility, life, loss)
106. Baby Steps…My Journey to Motherhood (infertility, ivf, recurrent miscarriage)
107. Baby Hungry (clomid, IF, life)
108. All Grown Up (domestic infant adoption, waiting, random)
109. Twists of Fate (life after miscarriage)
110. karlinda (open adoption, adoption process, veganism)
111. Tales of My Follies (waiting, day to day, pcos)
112. Melissa’s Thoughts and Realizations (infertility, hypothyroid, grad school)
113. Peanut noodle (infertility, miscarriage, ivf)
114. Melissa’s Life… As She Knows It (TTC #1, clomid, hope)
115. That’s My Answer (questions, life, fun)
116. Outside My Head (family, books, movies)
117. Semi-fertile (RPL, grief, life)
118. Not a Fertile Myrtle (male factor, pcos, endometriosis)
119. Raining Raining (marriage, (in)fertility, life)
120. Roy’s Progress (cancer, family, humor)
121. A Page In My Book (family life, if grad, special needs kids)
122. Hoping For Another Little One (infertility, open adoption, family)
123. Lifeslurper (IVF, DE, 40+)
124. On (In)fertile Ground (infertility, IVF, life)
125. My Little Drummer Boys (IVF twins, parenting ,daily life)
126. Ambivalent Womb (if, mf, ivf)
127. Smells Like Popsicles (kids, photography, family)
128. Ethi-hope-ia: The Journey To Our Sweet Baby Boy (international adoption, miscarriage, motherhood)
129. Gas Passer aka UUer (unicornuate uterus, gestational carrier cycle, anesthesia)
130. Lookingforaplussign (infertility, dreams, costs)
131. I-V-F YOU! (infertility, iui, ivf)
132. Maybe Baby? (pregnancy, miscarriage, infertility)
133. Last American Girl Standing (first medicated cycle)
134. offmymind.but from my heart (adoption, infertility, openess)
135. Plaid with Polka Dots (adoption, infertility, life)
136. Sorry, the list is now closed.

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Because posts about family size–like the “without children/with children,” breastfeeding, or circumcision factions–tend to bring out the same type of people who don’t actually read the post but instead just leave a comment furthering their argument, I thought I’d address these bullet points before jumping into this post:

• I have no strong feelings about family size. I don’t think we should look at the number but rather look at the individual family and examine what they can realistically support based on finances, house-size, outside support, desire for a certain number of children, needs to existing children, etc. So I’m pro-big family and I’m pro-small family.
• I do have strong feelings on single motherhood–I’m all for it. I don’t think anyone should feel limitations about reaching for their bliss. I think it needs to be a personal decision–not one size fits all–but I fully support SPBC. I think we need to spend less time harping about the number or sexuality of parents in the house and start looking at what children do need–one or more attentive adults who have the desire and ability to provide a child with love, affection, knowledge, and ethics. Back to family size, the number of people a single person can raise is entirely contingent on all the same criteria used to look at how many children two adults can raise.
• I don’t have strong feelings about Nadya Suleman or Kate Gosselin or Michelle Duggar (though now that I’ve caught one episode of Duggar’s show, I’ve told Josh that it is going to be our new thing). I only know them via a heavily-edited vehicle which is meant to make me see them from a certain angle. Therefore, when I write about them, it is merely examining what is on the screen and trying not to pull in assumptions. I don’t always succeed, but I do try. Just for the record, when I argue about a post, I do the same thing. I work with the words actually on the screen, and not make assumptions about what the author really meant.
• Because television is a heavily-edited medium (directors…direct. In other words, the director of a reality show is choosing the lens through which we see the person), I take everything I see on the screen with a grain of salt. I don’t know Fox’s motivations, but I can guess them based on some pretty heavy-handed clues such as ominous voiceovers. So, yeah, I get that Fox was trying to make Suleman appear a certain way. And I get that this post may appear as if I have agreed with them. I’m writing this not to address Nadya Suleman as a whole, but to highlight certain words she spoke during the documentary.
• I’m pro-circumcision, anti-breastfeeding, and anti-Santa! No vaccinations! Burn all the books! No peanut butter in schools! Free the whales! No wars! Chop down more trees! Who else can I offend?
• I often foam at the mouth–you know what I’m talking about, that stream of spittle pooling up in the corner and sometimes showering down on the front row?–when I’m up on my soapbox. I just wanted you to keep that image in mind.

Julie from A Little Pregnant asked a few weeks ago if people were going to watch the Nadya Suleman documentary on Fox, alerting me to how much you miss when you don’t turn on your television (why bother, I thought, now that the Next Food Network Star has been decided). I have to admit that I missed it, but the blog posts that popped up afterward made me track it down on Hulu and like the thousands or millions–I’m not sure how many people tuned in for the broadcast–watched life in Suleman household.

Because remember, it’s a person’s life. It’s 14 people’s lives.

There were two ways you could watch the footage. One is purely out of schadenfreude, taking pleasure in her pain and watching it with human cruelty. It can be rubber necking, a thankful-it’s-not-us exercise.

The other way is to use it as a lesson, an examination that while most people could keep a child–or even 14 children–alive, it is a very different proposition to raise a child. That being a parent is more than rocking the child to sleep, giving a bottle, and playing with them. That is simply the black-and-white side of parenting. But it’s also teaching right from wrong and building self-esteem and encouraging strengths–that greyer side that keeps bringing in the paychecks for Super Nanny or parenting book authors. After all, we wouldn’t say a nurse in the NICU parents the child. We say that she keeps the baby healthy and alive and cares for him. And the same is true at home. Almost everyone can keep a baby healthy and alive. It is quite another thing to parent.

It illustrated why preschools and daycares limit the number of children that can be adequately and safely watched by a single person. Humans simply weren’t made to be able to adequately take care of 14 children under the age of 9 at once. The Duggars have sort of perfected (if we can call it that) the idea of building a large family. Children are spaced so that the oldest can help with the youngest. The first child was born in 1988 and was over five when the fifth child was born. While life is still chaotic and busy at the Duggar house, the children have been raised understanding how they can help the family run smoothly and that system is certainly missing from the Suleman household, even with a nine-year-old present.

While family size and timing was somewhat out of Nadya Suleman’s hands–there is a big difference between family building without assistance and utilizing IVF–she did make the choice to transfer all six frozen embryos at once rather than attempt several future pregnancies, donate the embryos, or destroy them. There were options that allowed her to use them that did not include transferring all at once. And despite her claim that she never thought higher order multiples could happen, the possibility was definitely there. It is like a person exclaiming that they didn’t know a car accident could possibly happen when they got behind the wheel of a car, simply because they’ve driven before and it hasn’t happened. Car accidents are not a certainty, but they are always a possibility. And multiples are always a possibility when you transfer more than one embryo. Hell, they are a possibility even if you only transfer one.

But, as Suleman keeps repeating in the footage, the past is the past, the decisions have been made and the actions taken and now it comes down to what she does in the future. As I watched it, I kept in mind that Fox edited it to reflect a certain story, with all footage to the contrary on the cutting room floor. And at the same time, no family would hold up well to the scrutiny of cameras and an outsider’s editing work–especially in those early days of babyhood. I shudder to think of what Fox could have done with my own life if I allowed cameras in my house.

And maybe that’s the point. I wouldn’t allow cameras into my home, no matter how interested the world was about what goes on behind our closed doors.

Fox’s footage was sensationalized, edited to show a woman with poor decision making skills who never considered the future. This isn’t just in regard to her children; they drive the point home with showing her laughing through a story from her teenage years where she made her mother ride in the trunk of the car and how she would swerve around and slam on the brakes.

Nine times, the ominous voiceover warned me prior to commercial that I would be watching footage that I “won’t believe exists” (actually, once they told me the footage exists, I believed them the first time), which turned out to be the camera showing the backs of nurses and doctors blocking the view of Suleman’s c-section while the camerawoman placed getting her footage over the well-being and safety of anyone in the room.
I’m not sure what Fox found to be the unbelievable part–the fact that the camerawoman was wholly out of line, or the fact that we have shakey footage of the backs of nurses.

It is easier to watch it from the schadenfreude point-of-view: from the fact that Suleman squeals relentlessly in regard to every situation: “How is this possible?” or “This is not what I expected at all” to the truly bizarre opening showing her concerned about paparazzi taking pictures of the babies even though she is currently having the babies filmed and immediately fixing her make-up rather than tending to the crying infants. In one scene, she calls herself Octomum prior to her phone call to the police and admits that she had the term trademarked so she could use it for business ventures in the future.

It is easier to watch it from that schadenfreude vantage point when she continuously harps on how private she is and how she doesn’t want attention. When she mocks Kate Gosselin and states how Kate is desperate for attention. How she just wishes everyone would leave her alone because she is truly a very very private person and never dreamed she would get this attention. And yet, it is the push-me-pull-you contradictions that make it difficult to not rubber neck as she tells the filmmaker that she thinks reality television is a wonderful opportunity because they’ll get a lot of free experiences just as Jon and Kate have grabbed for their children. That at the end of the day, this very private person is showing her home life on television. And private and public are contradictions in and of themselves. She is not an actress with a job who happens to also have a private life that is under scrutiny. She is a mother with no job who has willingly placed her private life to be under scrutiny for payment.

It is difficult to see her arguing with her mother on camera. You have to wonder if they have had that conversation before and we’re just seeing the reenactment of a long-standing argument, or if her mother was finally giving her a too-late parenting lesson. I was deeply offended by Nadya’s understanding of adoption, believing that it’s a lack of love that moves one to create an adoption plan.

Mother: “You could have had an adoption. You didn’t have to have [the embryos] destroyed.”

Nadya: “…the audacity to say that any of these children should be adopted because I have more love for these children than I think…well, almost…I’m sure that many parents would have just as much love.”

My offense is not that she would choose to parent instead of create an adoption plan–that is a personal decision and there are certainly people who could raise (again, meaning: not only keep alive; but also parent and guide) 14 children. It is that she holds such an immature and ill-informed notion of her options that I’m not sure how she made a decision.

Which brings us back to the second way this documentary can be used: as a learning experience and as proof that it takes more than love, more than money, more than age to raise a child. And for people to understand before they procreate what it means to parent. That it goes beyond providing food, shelter, and clothing for a child. That it isn’t about holding a bottle or cuddling in the rocking chair or making sure they get through each 24 hour period in one piece. That you can have all the love and resources in the world, and it still might not be enough because children need guidance as much as food and hugs to grow. By which I mean grow emotionally. Just because a child is growing larger doesn’t mean that their conscience or self-esteem are keeping pace.

That parenting is so much more than feeding and burping and the best parents are the ones that realize the realities of the task beyond their love for babies. It is easy to love babies–they are cute and cuddly and generally under your command. It is much harder to raise children who need to develop their own world view, their own code of ethics, their own happiness. Because beyond the baby years are all the other years. And while Nadya Suleman speaks often about how she loves babies, I never heard her talk about the children in the future, how she envisions having this large family co-exist and thrive with one another. Because say what you want to about the Duggars, but that mother has a vision and she sticks to that vision regardless of the behaviour or feedback from her children or the outside world. And it is what makes her a ship continue to move forward rather than Suleman’s rickety boat spinning in circles.

Nadya Suleman would probably ask if anyone else thinks they could do better with 14 kids. And the answer is that I wouldn’t have gotten myself in that situation in the first place. I thought about my personal limits and acted accordingly. So no, I could not do better with 14 kids. And that’s why we made the family building choices we did.

cross-posted (sort of) with BlogHer.

Back in college, there was one of those nights where we were up at 4 a.m. eating Pokey sticks, and wondering if my blue was my friends’ blue, and “Watching the Wheels” came on. And someone commented that while the song obviously rocked, it had a limited usage. Like Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” could be used by any mooning teenager. Or every Bat Mitzvah can be enhanced with a version of “Shout.”

But how many people can use the song “Watching the Wheels” and have it work with their life? I mean, they’d have to not only be hugely and lastingly successful, but do so at a young enough age to have time to drop out and enjoy not being part of the game anymore. I mean, if Zac Efron drops out of life, he will all but be forgotten except for a few die-hards come twenty years from now. He cannot use “Watching the Wheels.” And Dustin Hoffman could stop making movies and use it, but honestly, he’s a little old for the song. When you’re that age, it’s called “retiring,” not “dropping out.”

Seriously, name me someone that it works with. The only one I’ve come up with is if Prince William stepped out of line for the throne to become a beach bum in St. Lucia. He has lasting fame and is young enough to call it dropping out.

Anyway, they used the song in Funny People and I grabbed Josh’s arm and said, “I must call everyone from that night in college because I have found somewhere that it totally works.” Wheeeew, sigh of relief. I have been waiting about 16 years to say that.

I was nostalgic for John Lennon after watching the movie so I threw his CD on in the car despite the groans coming from the backseat. “He’s actually very important. He was part of the Beatles who were the first really big rock-n-roll band. Girls screamed when they performed. They got so excited they collapsed on the floor and cried.”

This, apparently, was not a selling point for the music.

So they’re yelling and I’m trying to convince them to listen to one freakin’ song. And after that another freakin’ song. And then “Beautiful Boy” comes on and how can you turn off the CD on “Beautiful Boy?” “He wrote this song for his little boy, Sean, who is not so little anymore. About how he…loves…watching…him…[sniff]…grow…[long pause while I collect myself]…up.”

And I am crying as we drive down Seven Locks Road because of that bridge: “Out on the ocean / sailing away / I can hardly wait / to see you come of age / but I guess we’ll both just have to be patient.”

I should probably add that I have cried every time I’ve seen the preview for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.

We get through John Lennon. That afternoon, we go out to get the mail and on the back of a magazine is an advertisement for the Princess Diana exhibit in Philadelphia. I tell the ChickieNob that we can go and see Diana’s wedding dress because it is the dress of a real-life princess. If you think the girl gets excited over the idea of tricking her father’s office mates with a worm cake, you should have seen the total body joy over the thought of seeing tiaras worn by a real princess.

“Where does she live?” the ChickieNob asked.

“Well, she doesn’t live anymore.”

“Why not? She looks very young.”

“She was. She was in a car accident and the doctor could not fix her body.”

“What kind of car?” the Wolvog asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“It was probably a TVR,” he said confidently. “You can’t get them in America because they crash up a lot.”

We spent the next hour talking about Princess Diana and the work she did and her wedding and how she was the “People’s Princess” and at some brilliant point, I turned on YouTube to show them pictures and we found a photo montage set to “Goodbye English Rose” and I am bawling BAWLING as I try to tell them about watching the funeral on television with my British roommates and how people filled up the space in front of the palace with a sea of roses. And they are looking at me like I am completely crazy, after losing it over John Lennon earlier in the day.

And then Ted Kennedy dies.

I just read this and sent it on to a friend and wasn’t going to blog it and got halfway up the stairs and said to myself, “if you don’t write it out, you won’t get anything accomplished today because it will bother you for the next six hours.”

Read it and come back.

My largest problem is her strident stance without knowing the history or division within the larger community of those living child-free. That there truly is meaning behind the word choice within infertility. That the term “childless” is used prior to resolving infertility and “child-free after infertility” is often used after the person has stepped onto that path out of infertility. That “childless not by choice” is equally used and accepted. That not everyone who is without children wants to be without children. And that this woman’s post would be especially hurtful to every woman living child-free after infertility because seriously, does she need to figuratively hold up her infant and rub it in the face of every woman who is unable to have children whether it is due to infertility or life circumstances?

Her commenter apparently stated that she preferred the term child-free over childless, and this suddenly becomes an attack on a person’s decision to have children? If I don’t buy a house and state that I’m an apartment-dweller, does it make me anti-house, hateful of everyone who has to mow their lawn? If I don’t eat meat and say that I’m a vegetarian, does it mean that I hold those who eat hamburgers in complete disgust, wondering how they could make such a hateful choice?

I’m a vegetarian. I cooked steak for Josh last night. I made the twins chicken. Seems like you can make your own life decisions and not negate another person’s if you wish.

My head exploded off my shoulders because she takes a step from someone asking for respect in regards to their own life decisions to attacking those who apparently listen (hence, read) her in the first place. She could have opened the door to a conversation about terminology, about why those who are child-free by choice prefer the term child-free over childless and why others utilize different terminology. She could have explored the many reasons why people do not build their families.

To answer her question, as a mother, I would tell the child-free that I’m grateful that they write their blogs so I can walk in their shoes and try to understand their world because it is a person’s unique life that makes the world a beautiful and interesting space and I am just thankful that everyone else has not conformed their life to match my own. And that my heart goes out to those who are unable to build their families and I will always support you and take your lead in how you are resolving your infertility and continuing to live life.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Lest you think I am the only person in the family with brilliant ideas, the ChickieNob and Wolvog dreamed up bringing a chocolate cake to Josh’s office and having him write a mock-angry email to the staff asking who left a cake in the lounge because it was now crawling with worms–and decorating the cake with GUMMY WORMS TO FREAK THE SHIT OUT OF A BUNCH OF NON-PROFIT DO-GOODERS.

They were positively gleeful, dancing around the kitchen, imagining the surprise of the staff as they encountered what we dubbed the Worm Cake. They were so excited that they were turning into Ed Grimley, running back and forth in the kitchen, breathlessly describing the revulsion and horror that would rock Josh’s workplace while…um…I did the majority of the baking. They were so busy running that no one helped me; the deliciousness of their trick was unbearable.

They did curl up two gummy worms underneath the pool of “watery dirt” (aka, Leah’s chocolate icing. Go bother her for the recipe because it is so damn good) and placed a few crawling on the top. And this was their creation.

Except the horror show that was to happen was never to be because the ChickieNob got a turn of conscience right before bedtime and cried over the idea of people being freaked out in their offices because they thought there was an army of worms on the top floor. And she wanted me to call her father and make him promise that he would tell his coworkers the truth. That it wasn’t dirt and worms despite the overwhelmingly realistic evidence in the eyes of a five-year-old. It was just chocolate cake with chocolate icing and gummy candy. It was breaking her heart to consider the alternative that almost was.

Instead, her new idea before she went to sleep was to somehow coax everyone into the hallway for a giant, five-minute dance party. Dream big, little girl. She went to bed muttering, “they’re trying to work. But I want them to dance. They are trying to work. But it would be funny if they would just dance.”

And I am willing to put down money that she figures it out–that she somehow gets everyone dancing in the hallway, if not at the same time like a Coke commercial, then for their own five minutes of enjoyment.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.