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What if I discard it ON PURPOSE? What then? I don’t know. I’m sort of putting off that decision for a while.

Here’s the excerpt she was referring to:

Mommybloggers: We love that you host Daring Family Freestyle Rap Battles. In fact, we’re thinking that there needs to be a way to incorporate it into BlogHer 2007. Can you give us a sample of your lyrical prowess?

Kathryn:
Get yer tooth-BRUSH from the vanity, OOO let’s fight cavities

You better put away the play-doh, this moment
You own it, you better never let it go
Crusty. You only get one tub, do not miss your chance to show
Grammy your sculpture once before bedtime, yo

You really don’t get the whole experience with just the words on the page. If you could picture me as one of the white moms on Oprah trying to “get down” with one fist raised in the air, attempting some wooden-legged booty-poppin’ as they watched Mary J. Blige perform recently, you’d feel like you were actually there in our living room for a DFFRB. Laylee and Dan like to add some flava with a sweet two-fingered wiggedy-wiggedy faux-vinyl-spinning maneuver which I plan to incorporate into my own routines at some future date.

The tips on the WikiHow Site are invaluable and I’m sure the flo will be more flo-inacious after I read through those a couple of times. I especially like the part where it explains that to “spit” in rap culture does not mean the “forcible expulsion of saliva from the mouth”. Thanks. We are all so much more “down” now.

******
Oh, and the Blog This tattoos are gone. I still have a few MommyBlogHer tatts for any mommas out there who want them.

I just got the invitation to their going away shindig and it has been asked that we bring nothing but fruit to the memorial services, at Big Daddy Mo’s request. It was listed as his “final” request.

This is troubling to me on many levels. Will there be a firing squad after the beach ball volleyball? Is he too good for The Best Cookies in the State of Washington? In his fruitalicious plea, is he suggesting something about the people of California or his fellow Washingtonians? Dude. We can’t even bring granola?

And finally, if you’re reading this Big Mamma Mo — so help me if this is the final request I get out of you. Seriously, if we lose contact — I will hunt you down and I’m gonna be wielding something more powerful than a piece of fruit.

to this:

in the course of a few days. I can PARK in there now for the love of PETE! Who ever heard of such a thing? Maybe I’ll just install a strobe light and start a disco instead.

Last week my home was filled with friends and family. Now that they’ve all left, I return to my blogging nerdery like a wino to his bottle.

My new post is up over at Parenting and here’s the schedule for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn discussion. Feel free to post comments here or comment on your own blog and leave a link in my comments.

Chapters 1-10 Saturday, August 12th
Chapters 11-26 Saturday, August 19th
Chapters 27-37 Saturday, August 26th
Chapters 38-45 Saturday, September 2nd
Chapters 46-End Saturday, September 9th

That’s about 100 pages per week. You don’t have to stick to the schedule and you can definitely go WAY “off topic” in your discussion. If you’re discussing it, that makes it “on topic”. Happy reading. It really is a fabulous book.

I don’t really have them, unless you call ripping your brother’s arms off, chewing on them and then beating him over the head with them aggressive. She only really does that sort of thing when he does something really insane like look at her while she’s eating marshmallows, so I wouldn’t exactly call her aggressive. He’s only got a few arms anyway and I think once they’re all gone, the problem will pretty much be solved.

Truly though, this is a major issue that I often hear parents talking about. Either we worry that our own child is too aggressive or we have playdates with kids who gank toys, bite chunks out of other kids’ flesh or show up at your house with a fist fulla steel.

Please leave tips for either circumstance. What do you do to help tame your own child’s out-of-control aggression? How much discipline is too much? Have you found a great way to calm Nina down before she detonates her bomb of toddleric rage on the playground?

On the other hand, how do you deal with other people’s children who you feel are too aggressive towards your own? Do you think it’s acceptable to discipline someone else’s child as a form of protection? Do you think your child should fight their own battles? How do you address the issue with the other parent?

Personally, I think that biting or hitting back are a lazy way to solve the problem and may do more harm than good. A more appropriate way to manage the behavior would be to use a little love and logic parenting. “Oh, that’s such a bummer. Now you have two choices. Either you need to untie Timmy and take the play-doh out of his mouth, or you need to at least ask his mom what color of play-doh he likes being force-fed best.”

When your child is being bullied by someone else and the other parent is present, I think it’s more appropriate to mention it to the other parent than to try to attempt to discipline the child yourself. For the most part, I try to teach my kids to deal with it and stand up for themselves. That’s why I’ve hired my own professional ninja to work with them on technique and help them with their wardrobe.

Now please, tell me what you do. Not everyone has the means to hire their own personal ninja or the patience to parent with the love and the logicality.

Hoping not to make the same type of faux pas at BlogHer this weekend or actually ever again in adult company, I’d love advice on making small talk with strangers or new friends. How do you keep the conversation going? What are some great one-liners to pull out when you have nothing supercalifragilisticexpialidociously wonderful to say?

Here are a few tips for spicing up the usual dinner party conversation:

Instead of — “So, do you have any kids?”
Try catching them off-guard — “Dead chickens’ ghosts are haunting my new house. Do you have any thoughts on how I could wrangle them into the crawl space?”

Instead of — “You look really great tonight!”
Try personalizing the compliment — “You look so much better in person. South Beach Diet? Am I right or am I right or am I right? Right. Right. Right. Bing!”

Instead of — “You’re from Michigan? Do you know Amanda?”
Try drawing it out a little. The “do you know” game is always such a big hit. — “You’re from Michigan? I love Michigan! Start listing every person you know from there and I’ll tell you if they were my cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s college roommate or not. [wait for name] Nope. [wait for name] Nope. [wait for name] Nope”… hours and hours of fun

Instead of — “I’m Kathryn. Nice to meet you.”
Try to work on building an audience as well as a new friendship — “I’m Kathryn, the Daring Young Mom of dub dub dub dot daring young mom dot com, a hilarious little blog about this and that, my kids, yadda yadda page views per day. Nice to meet you.”

Instead of — “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’m a big fan of your work.”
Try to let them know just how much you enjoy their work — “I’m so glad I finally get to meet you. It feels like I’ve been living on your green leather sofa for months and months, right next to you, typing on your laptop, the iBook you just bought. That was such a good choice. I told you that, remember? Commenter #167. Good comment, right? I got like three hits off that comment. I looked up your address online but I’ve been too shy to send you anything? Can I send you anything? Or would that be weird?”

Okay now, what have you guys got for me?

Remember when I asked everyone for their favorite book of all time or at least their favorite book at the moment? I’ve made a comprehensive list of them here.

From that list, I selected several books we could choose from to read together during the month of August. And here they are in no particular (besides alphabetical) order:

The Blue Sword — Robin McKinley
A Circle of Quiet — Madeleine L’Engle
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister — Gregory Maguire
The English Patient — Michael Ondaatje
Freak the Mighty — Rodman Philbrick
Hold On To Your Kids — Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
The Known World — Edward P. Jones
The Ladies Auxiliary — Tova Mirvis
Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry
Obasan — Joy Kogawa
Secret Life of Bees — Sue Monk Kidd
The Time Traveler’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — Betty Smith
A Walk in the Woods — Bill Bryson
Watership Down — Richard Adams

Click here to vote (You don’t have to sign up for anything. Just close the window when you’re done.) for the one you’d be most interested in reading and discussing. Also, please look over the big list of DYM readers’ favorites and leave a comment on this post if you have any fabulous books you’d like to add.

I’m about to embark on my first solo travel in over 4 years and am giddy with glee. Even harder than deciding what to wear is deciding what to read on the trip. I’ll leave the voting open until Wednesday morning at 10:00am PST so I can get the book in time to read at the airport.

Thanks. Have a great night.