5 Fun Activities When You're Pregnant

1. Sauna. That intense heat is just soooooo relaxing for you and your unborn babe. Helps relieve those pregnancy aches and pains, too!

2. Blue cheese sampling. What mother-to-be doesn't crave dairy? And no wonder -- all that calcium helps build strong bones in the li'l fetus.

3. Dodgeball. Not just for fifth graders anymore. The jumping, running and throwing are a great stress reliever, and an excellent cardio workout to boot.

4. Whisky tasting. Haven't you always wondered what the difference is between Irish and Scottish, single malt and blend? Indulge your curiosity and find out now, before the baby comes along and you can't go out anymore.

5. Build-your-own meth lab. A fun weekend project that doesn't even take a whole weekend -- you can set up a lab in a coffee pot, even! It's that simple.

A Stroll with Snookums

Joan and Snookums take a walk around their neighborhood in Jersey City. They pass a Sikh man in a turban.

Snookums (pointing at turban): Hat! Hat!

Joan: Yes, yes, sweetie, that's a hat.

They pass a gangbanger.

Snookums (pointing at gangbanger's enormous, half-laced Timberland boots): Shoe! Shoe!

Joan: Yes, that's right, that's a shoe.

Snookums (pointing at gangbanger's snarling pit bull): WOOF WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!

Dog goes berserk, barking its head off and straining at its leash. Joan tries to get Snookums past the dog without it managing to sink its fangs in her tender flesh. Snookums continues to bark like a maniac.

Joan (trying to distract Snookums): Look, honey, look at the bird!

Snookums (looks up): Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet!

They pass a soccer field.

Snookums: Ball! Ball! Ball! Points at passing Arab woman in headscarf pushing a stroller. Hat! Hat! HAT! HAAAAT!!!!

Joan (points to woman's baby in stroller): Look, honey, look! What's that?

Snookums (quietly): Baby. Points at baby's nose. No?

Joan: Yes, that's right, that's the baby's nose.

Snookums (points at baby's eye): Ah! Ah!

Joan: Yes, that's the baby's eye, very good.

Snookums passes gas, makes farting noise with her mouth, laughs uproariously.

The Ideal Job for Snookums

When you have sex in the United States -- or anywhere, for that matter -- you might wind up having a baby. But if you're really lucky, you wind up having an elf. Which is what Snookums is, as you can clearly see from this photo.

(I always used to tell Zany Dad he reminded me of an elf -- specifically, of that elf who wanted to be a dentist, from The Year Without a Santa Claus. Little did I know that I carried the recessive gene for elfishness.)

Apparently, the entire nation of Iceland believes in elves, according to an article I just read in Vanity Fair. The Icelanders haven't been reading this blog or anything, it's just part of their cultural tradition. In fact, when Alcoa tried to open an aluminum-smelting plant there a few years ago, it had to hire an official government inspector to certify the construction site as elf-free.

I kid you not. There is a civil servant in Iceland who actually gets paid to check whether there are any elves (or "hidden people," the politically correct term) on construction sites.

This would be the perfect job for Snookums. Who better to spot an elf than a fellow elf? When she spotted one, she could point at him with her tiny, elfin finger and speak to him in Elvish, asking him to please leave so the nice Americans can smelt their aluminum.

Lose Weight by Blogging about Great Sex in New York with Celebrities!

I asked my friend Lennart, who has a popular blog (at least that's what he tells me, but it's in Swedish so he could be lying), how I can get more than, say, 6 people to visit this blog. His advice?

"Write really long headlines full of buzzwords. Every time I write a post with the words 'sex in the United States' in it, I get tons of hits from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They find my blog through Google."

He also suggested I avoid topics like babies shitting in bathtubs. He would probably hate the post on farting I wrote yesterday.

In other words, Lennart thinks I should ditch my mommy-blogger demographic for the repressed-teenage-Muslim demographic. But I ask you, which has more purchasing power that will appeal to advertisers?

Okay, so I don't have any advertisers, but I hope to have at least one someday.

Tomorrow's post: Find a job by blogging about great sex in New York with celebrities!

Only 15 Months Old, and Already Making Fart Jokes

I may have created a monster -- or a comedic genius.

A while back, I started a joke with Snookums where I'd make farting noises with my mouth when she passed gas. Then the other day, Snookums was perusing a baby magazine and came upon an ad for Desitin, featuring a baby's bare bum. She immediately started making farting noises with her mouth.

At first I thought she was just making the noise randomly. But a few pages later, there was another photo of a baby's behind -- and she pointed at it and started making those farting noises again.

I still can't believe she can make the connection between a noise she makes with her mouth and an image of a butt. That's a lot of abstraction.

So is it brilliance or precocious immaturity when a preverbal toddler acts like a 12-year-old, or the former President of the United States?

St. Patrick: Patron Saint of Bodily Fluids

Here's a recap of my weekend:

• Took Snookums yesterday to a lab where they drew blood to test her for lead exposure. (This is a routine screening.) After they were finished, her Band-Aid came off and she dripped blood all over her onesie and my (formerly) white coat.
  
• Last night, Snookums took a huge dump in the tub while I was bathing her. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever taken a huge dump in the tub while you were bathing, or has my daughter ever come over to your house and taken a dump in your tub?
  
• Tonight when I was getting ready for bed, I accidentally let the hem of my nightgown dangle into the toilet -- and ended up peeing all over my own nightie. Gah. So now, instead of the sexy Donna Karan nightie that zips open for easy access, I have to wear the granny gown that buttons all the way up to the neck. I look like Ma Ingalls. Zany Dad is not pleased.
• Did I mention I have my period?
  

Finger-Lickin' Good!

Mmm.... with curry dip.

And they're patriotic!

Top 5 Gifts for Pregnant Women

1. Native American Spirits. Nothing steadies those preggo jitters like a puff on a cigarette, and these are made from 100% organic tobacco.

2. Sushi. It's a little-known fact that gestating women don't get nearly enough mercury. And raw fish is way more nutritious -- cooking destroys vitamins!

3. Blue cheese. Moms-to-be need calcium for two! Best to buy fromage bleu from France or some other country where they don't pasteurize it -- again, heat destroys vitamins!

4. Bourbon. Face it, pregnancy is stressful. After a long, hard day struggling up flights of stairs and standing on the subway, what expectant woman doesn't appreciate a few shots of Maker's Mark?

5. Crack. Sure, the rest of the population has moved on to meth, but knocked-up ladies appreciate the classic pick-me-up. Now available with a special pipe for women only: "LadyCrack."

Help! I Need a Decoder Ring

OK, so I thought the email I got yesterday about belly buttons was batshit crazy unusual. Then today I got the following in my inbox (from a totally different person, btw):

Before this enlarged new assignment, I've already have a finance accounting deal with 30+ members need supervise with lots of operation initiatives, client interaction, cost and team management daily, it's my first time to work with local and global transition, solution team, and 7+ territory clients for a new 50+ team size finance accounting deal outsourcing in, I dedicated a lot and get involved from the initial plan stage ,contributed my finance accounting experience , seeking for expertise opinions globally to help transition team, clients get the new deal transitioned in , we've passed through a very hard time, for this client had never got any experice on outsourcing, they had unbeliverable high expectation and constraint project schedule requirement and changed their detail support module frequently, request for accelerated transition and go-live under technology, people and operation not ready circumstance, which made each of our project team stretched step by step to identify optinal solution to drive our way out for success with client satisfaction and our acceptable risk level, this is a great team work with resources leverage cross geography, functions.

Clearly, this person is stalking me. Trying to impress me with their tales of unbeliverable high expectation and operation not ready circumstance. Even worse, it's working! I'm succumbing to their experice and optinal solution. It's all because I used to read those bizarre ravings on bottles of Dr. Bronner's soap:

"Replace half-true Socialist-fluoride poison & tax-slavery with full-truth, work-speech-press & profitsharing Socialaction! All-One! So, help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump, watering Babylon-roof-gardens & 800 billion Israel-Milorganite fruit trees, guarded by Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training."

At least Dr. Bronner actually wrote THREE sentences, not one.

Does Snookums Work Here?

I was editing a document the other day at work and came across the term "workstreams," which I didn't understand (I edit documents written for IT consultants, so this happens at least once a sentence).

"What are workstreams?" I asked my writer, who in turn asked the person he'd interviewed. Here's her reply:

"That means they give a belly button to any action or goal so that everyone knows what their goals are."

Can anyone explain what this means? It's at points like this that I want to put my daughter on the phone with these people, so she can shout, "Ha! Shoo! Geh beh deh beh deh beh baby boo!"

The Tie Gives the Lie

Seen on 6th Avenue in Chelsea the other day:

Short, middle-aged man on cell phone, talking earnestly to someone on the other end about his "credentials" and his "expertise."

Speech contradicted totally by his tie, which had giant Mickey Mice all over it, visible from 50 feet away.

Why I Haven't Been Here. Or Happy.

Due to an insane error honest mistake on the part of Zany Dad, I did not have Internet service for a week. Then my aunt died, so I was out of town for a couple of days attending the funeral.

But one good thing came out of all this: I learned that you don't have to be a kid to order a Happy Meal!

Seriously, I always assumed that Happy Meals were for children only -- kind of like New York City playgrounds (which have signs reading, "No adults unless accompanied by a child"). But apparently, there's no age limit.

How did I not know this before? Just dumb, I guess. (My sister asked how I cheer myself up when I'm down without Happy Meals.)

At least now I won't need to bring Snookums along the next time I go to McDonald's. Unless, of course, I want to eat in the playground.