It's hard to choose...

...which photo of The Geej I should include with my "Mother of the Year, 2006" application.

There's this one:

Where she's running around in just a t-shirt and diaper, after having invaded my pantyhose drawer (will someone puh-leeeze tell me why the fuck I have a pantyhose drawer?) and pulling out lots of scarves to add to her outfit.

And then there's this one:

In which an empty box that once housed a case of vodka works very well as a hat to go with this smashing shirt + diaper + Mardi Gras beads ensemble. (BTW--the empty vodka box? Yeah, my mom brought that from her house in order to carry some stuff. We are one classy lot of ladies, I tell ya.)

And finally, there's this one:

That's when she had her black eye back in August. She was staying with my mom while I was visiting--sigh--Mr. Wonderful, and the dog my mom was dog-sitting at the time, tried to bite GJ's face but thankfully only nipped her cheekbone. The result was a perfect shiner. This picture (with that damn cheesy grin of hers) doesn't do it justice. It was TOTALLY CPS material.

So yeah...I'm gonna win this "Mother of the Year" contest. Hands down.

Dirty, dirty baby.

Those of you who've had kids in daycare know what I mean when I say, Daycare Funk. For those of you who don't: It's the layer of snot and dirt and tempra paint and dried yogurt that forms a thin but vibrant layer on your child when you pick him/her up that was not there when you dropped the pristine little prince/princess off around 8:30 that morning. Daycare Funk usually limits where you can "stop on the way home" unless of course you're planning on visiting a city dump or colony of homeless people living under an overpass on your way to la casa.

Today I go to pick up The Geej, and from a distance, damn she looks cute. The daycare workers have put her hair up in this teeny ponytail, slightly off center, and totally disarming. But then I get up close, and I see the crusty boogers in/around her nose, the dirt embedded beneath the fingernails on her filthy hands, and the tablespoons full of yogurt dried in her hair--which is apparently the reason for the ponytail to begin with because, without it, she looked like this:

So feast your eyes on the cutest Daycare Funk covered critter west of the Mississippi

Crusty but cute:

Picture this:

It's 5:25 p.m., and I'm holding The Geej in my arms. We're listening to "Party Shuffle" on my iTunes. Suddenly, "Root Down" by the Beastie Boys comes on. I crank it, and we start dancing. I'm asking her (and then answering), "How you gonna kick it? Gonna kick it root down!" She fucking loves it. We are TOTALLY rocking out, shaking our groove things, and she's laughing her ass off. When I stop moving, she starts bouncing in my arms, wanting more. Hilarious. It's official: I've become one of "those moms". Yowzah.