Nothing exciting is good. Very good.

Our seats to watch the performance were something far worse than horrible, but they were better than last year's because they were up in a balcony with hardly any other people. I'll take looking down on my kid over having to listen to nonstop whispering, grandmas laughing, and people moving around and around and around any day of the week.

This year Alexis took both a ballet/tap class and a jazz/gymnastics class. I was a little concerned that it was Too Much For Her To Handle, but I needn't have worried. She didn't always love having two hours of dance class every week, but she couldn't have picked one over the other if I had paid her.

She's already started having deep thoughts about what classes she wants to take in the fall. Creative Moment gets added to her selections at this age, so she's going to have quite the decision to make. She isn't ready to quit ballet, tap, jazz, or gymnastics. She loves them all in different ways.

She made it through all three of her performances without any major mistakes. It's kind of mind-blowing to me just how well she knew each of the dances. She didn't have to look at the teachers off-stage for hints ... she just KNEW. She kept her eyes on the audience and smiled throughout it all.

The absolute only snag of the event was when I went to pick the short person up from the dressing room after the show. She burst into tears when she saw me because she was sad that she didn't get a trophy. Trophies are given to dancers who have been with that studio for at least five years. She has three years left to go.

One of the girls in her jazz/gym class did get a trophy, so Alexis was all about fussing at me for not sending her to that studio all along. The thing is that the kid has been taking dance and/or gymnastics lessons for five of her six years, but the first three were somewhere else because there is no way that kid could have done the big stage thing even two years ago. She was simply too shy.

Now she struts out in front of 500 people like it's no big thing.

Good job, kid. I may not always like all that comes along with being a Dance Mom, but I sure do like watching you enjoy all that comes with being a Dancer.

The garden is starting to look positively amazing as the perennials have started to sprawl and meander and layer themselves. 

Penny was mercifully quiet as she sat playing in the grass. The floppy little pup recently discovered that she has a voice and has been practicing using it entirely too often. Her moments of silence are worth cherishing.

It was a beautiful, sunny evening. It was neither too hot nor too cold, as evidenced by the happy little frog that was hanging out in the pond just feet away.

As Alexis and I sat enjoying a particularly delicious batch of Potato and Tomato Bake and some grilled corn on the cob, we chatted about our plans for the weekend. Her loopy curls bounced as she excitedly reminded me that her dance recital was just "one sleep" away.

And then Mr. Husband joined us out on the patio. My blissful peace was ripped to shreds in an instant.

"Daddy, my tooth is REALLY loose. Will you pull it for me?" Alexis asked with a grin on her face.

"Sure," he replied as he reached into her mouth and gave a good yank.

Words jammed in my head as I tried not to gag. I WAS EATING, PEOPLE.

Flappy teeth are always gross. They are extra gross when I'm trying to eat my dinner.

Moments later, Alexis cackled with glee as blood dripped from the new hole in her smile. She sat that nubby little mass of discarded human matter on her napkin, just inches from my face.

They were both mighty proud of themselves.

I still haven't forgiven them.

That's two. How many more of those disgusting little flappy baby teeth am I going to have to survive?

Wait. Don't answer that. It's better that I just don't know.

That tends to happen when someone mentions "Nutella" in a conversation.

A discussion about food in general somehow resulted in a wormhole that caused this.

That, my friends, is a Nutella Captain Crunch Milkshake.

I ended up there after finding this and checking out that and with a little nudge from Twitter. 

Wormholes lead to delicious things. Yes, yes they do.

You are going to need vanilla ice cream, milk, Nutella, and Captain Crunch. Oh, and a blender. A blender is helpful.

Nutella Captain Crunch Milkshake

2 big scoops of vanilla bean ice cream
1/2 cup milk (more if you like runny shakes, less if you like them thick)
4 tablespoons Nutella
1/2 cup Captain Crunch cereal 

1. Put all of your ingredients in a blender and blend for about 30 seconds at low speed. Serve immediately. You get bonus points if you put whip cream on top. 

And we are now all going to pretend that it's perfectly reasonable for there to still be Easter decorations sitting on my mantle. Ahem.

It won't be the first time I've done that.

I'm publishing it despite the fact that it will get me in trouble with some people because I've reached the point where I'm 100% clear on what I want. The whole thing has been very muddy in my head recently, so it's a relief to find myself absolutely certain.

*********************************************************************

I found myself sitting in a room listening to an incredibly smart and successful woman provide tips on how I could more effectively "build my brand."

All I could think was "I am not a brand. I am a person."

I looked around the room, desperate to make eye contact with someone who appeared to be thinking the same thing.

I didn't find anyone. I was fully immersed in a group of people who are very actively trying to "build their brand."

There is nothing wrong with that, by the way. Nothing at all. It's just . . . not me.

*********************************************************************

"With as much traffic as you get, you could be making a lot more money if you did things a little differently." A wise person once uttered that very true statement.

I knew he was right. I've known all along that there are ways that I could be making money from this site which I blatantly ignore. For example, every single day I delete about 200 emails asking me to post about this product or link to that service or talk about this great new thing.

Often, there is an offer of money to do it. I delete the emails anyway.

*********************************************************************

I'm not sure how many people know this, but unemployment compensation is most definitely not a replacement for the income you get when you're employed. In my case, unemployment is roughly 1/3 of what I was making before my position was eliminated.

The little bit of money I make from this site has been an enormous help these past few months while I've been looking for a new job. ENORMOUS. It isn't anywhere near enough to make things painless, but it has been enough to occasionally buy groceries. $100 here and there has done so much to lessen the blow.

It's very tempting to reply to an email offering you a few bucks in exchange for a post when money is tight. Yet, I haven't done it. I couldn't.

But every time I hit that "delete" button, my head hurt a little bit.

*********************************************************************

There are a bunch of criteria that I have always used when deciding whether or not to work with an ad network or run a sponsored post or work with a brand. For example, some of you may have been around when I broke up with Google AdWords. An ad for baby caskets had shown up in my sidebar and HOMEY DON'T PLAY THAT. I didn't just block that ad, I deleted my AdWords account, thereby forfeiting the money I had already made for the entire quarter.

I didn't regret the decision one bit. Nor did I regret it when I broke up with another ad network for displaying autoplay videos in my sidebar. I find autoplay videos to be one of the worst diseases the internet has. I'm sure many of you hate them as much as I do. I don't care how much they pay, they don't belong here.

And then there are sponsored posts. I have a ton of things I consider when I evaluate them. I have to know that I can be honest with my thoughts. I have to feel like the post fits in with my overall goals for this site. I have to feel 100% OK partnering with that brand. I actually enjoy sponsored posts, but they need to be genuine. And sparse.

If I have mentioned a product or brand here, you can be absolutely certain that I genuinely like the company behind it and believe in what they are doing. Every review that has appeared in this space has been completely honest. Carefully worded, perhaps, but definitely honest.

It has been really tempting to loosen my standards while money has been tight. I haven't done it, but there has been lots of turmoil in my head over that stance.

*********************************************************************

"I bet I can get them to pay me to write about that," she whispered across the table.

As she was saying that, I was thinking, "I wonder if there's a way that could help Liz." Liz is a friend from a zillion years ago who is currently smiling through a very rough situation.

It was in that instant that I knew. I knew without any doubt whatsoever that I am doing things the right way for me.

I may not be a brand and I may not be monetizing this site as well as I could be, but I feel right about the legacy I'm creating. Together we've made Christmas better for hundreds of kids. Together we've helped save a life. Together we've changed lives. Together we have made the world a better place.

I am not a brand. I am a person. I'm an incredibly fortunate person who happens to have readers who are willing to help me leverage this site to do something much more valuable than cashing a few checks.

Thank you.

Anyway, this is the first time I've been out of town in ... a while. I have a history of traveling constantly for work, but reigned that in when Alexis was born. I've traveled a bit since her birth, but certainly not often.

It's really no big deal for me to leave town. Mr. Husband is more than capable of handling the little monster all by himself. In some ways, he's better equipped for it than I am. Alexis and I are so very similar that we often butt heads, so he's able to be the level head with a different perspective at times.

That's my fancy way of saying she's nicer to him.

My schedule was crazy today so I ended up not being able to call and check on my peeps until nearly 9:00. Since Alexis is nicer to the husband than she is to me, she was fast asleep by then. It's worth fighting me over bedtime despite the fact that I have never once caved on the bedtime issue. For him? She goes to bed in a snap.

Grumble grumble.

A sleeping kid is a kid who doesn't talk, so it has now been over a day since I last heard her squeaky little Minnie Mouse voice. On a normal day Alexis crams in enough words to fill a week, so that's a lot of not hearing her words.

Remind me that I missed hearing her voice tomorrow when I'm about to start complaining about her using up all of the words in the whole wide world again, OK?

And I do mean *ALL* of her clothes ... every last thing she has ever worn in her entire life.

Before we moved to the giant house with too many bathrooms just shy of three years ago, our itty bitty townhouse posed many storage challenges. At the top of that challenge list was Alexis' closet. It was literally one foot wide. LITERALLY. As in, I went to IKEA and bought her closet and it was only one foot wide. She had four drawers and a tiny little hanging bar, which means I had storage space for exactly the clothes that fit her at the time and nothing more.

I was AMAZING at keeping her closet under control. I was also AMAZING at putting all of the clothes that she had outgrown into storage tubs and sticking them where they wouldn't be seen. And then we moved and I was AMAZING at ignoring those storage tubs ... and allowing them to multiply.

Yeah. So. I probably should have gone through it all a long time ago and sold what was worth selling, gave away what needed to be given away, and blah, blah, blah. I didn't. I just hid it out of sight.

Until this past week when I made up my mind to sort through it all and consign it at the Just Between Friends Consignment Event. And by "all" I mean I made it through about half of size 3 and size 4 stuff and then gave up. That alone put me up over 150 items and took me two full days to sort, wash, de-wrinkle, hang, and tag, so I decided that was PLENTY.

At this very moment, if you walk into our dining room, you'll feel like you walked into a really weird Gap Outlet. I, uh, apparently shop at Baby Gap a lot because there are piles and piles of Baby Gap jeans and sundresses and t-shirts. I didn't have the guts to count just how many pair of Gap jeans the kid has outgrown because I'd have to punch myself in the face when I passed ten.

I'd be punching myself a whole bunch of times.

The good news is that I only came across a few things that I had some sort of emotional attachment to. I tucked a few dresses back into storage, but was very happy to get rid of 99.9% of the clothes.

Alexis, on the other hand, WAS NOT HAPPY. She walked in on my epic purging activities and promptly started picking things up.

"I love this shirt!" she declared.

"This dress is sooo cute!" she said.

"I remember this!" she cried.

With each declaration of adoration, the kid followed up by saying, "Can I keep it, please?"

She wanted to keep all of the clothes. ALL OF THEM.

I let her try a few things on, in no small part because my favorite part of Tommy Boy is when Chris Farley dances around in the little coat. It was fun having her reenact that scene multiple times without knowing that she was doing it.

Each time she would reach the point where she would be forced to admit that the dress (it was always the dresses that she dared try on) didn't fit, she would crinkle up her face, give me a very respectable I Hate You glare, and begrudgingly place the item back in the "sell" pile. "I guess you can sell it, momma, but I get to keep the money" she would say.

You guys. YOU GUYS. The Hoarder Gene runs strong in that kid, but I think maybe I found the cure. It smells just like money!

Anybody have a hoarder they need me to cure? My rates are extremely reasonable.

I just don't need a Hallmark holiday to give me permission to enjoy a day to its fullest or to know that Alexis appreciates me. I know she does.

But now that Alexis is old enough to understand Mothers Day, she's super invested in making it a big deal. She woke me up Sunday morning all sorts of upset because Mr. Husband was at work so she didn't have a co-conspirator to help her make me breakfast in bed.

The kid has a good heart. Fortunately, her good heart found its happy again when I told her I really wanted a bowl of cereal. Cereal is one thing she can handle all by herself.

And then the kid reached into my chest, grabbed hold of my heart, and filled it with her special crazy brand of love. "Momma, I have $3.29. I want to take you somewhere special but I don't know where we can go."

That kid. Man.

Obviously, $3.29 doesn't go very far, but I had a idea. We have a Zoo membership and I am currently in possession of a fun toy. It's a Tamron 70-300mm lens which I have to give back after Alexis' dance recital next week, but until then? I WANNA PLAY!

The Zoo is a fantastic place to play with a long lens.

Good heavens I wish I could keep that lens. Anybody want to give me $350 so that I can? No? ::sigh::

The other thing about the Zoo is that it's a really fantastic place to spend a few hours with my most favorite kid in the whole wide world.

(Best photobomb by a shark ever? I think yes.)

I don't know when or how it happened, but somewhere along the line, Alexis has turned into a pretty amazing little human. She's fun to be around, especially when she's not running her mouth so much that I'm trying to figure out ways to weave her toenails into thread and sew her lips together. For Mothers Day she kept her mouth under control, though, so there was no fantasizing or plotting or scheming or asking her to go make noise somewhere far away from my ears.

There was just fun and good conversations and a few hours of me hanging out with my kid.

I don't think it can get any better than that.