We decided not to have another baby so we adopted instead.

Welcome, Princess Caitlin Huggadoo!

You can call her Katie. She’s a three-and-a-half-month-old English bulldog and boy can she fart. She can clear a room. I took her to Jackson’s school this morning and a dozen excited preschoolers were crowding around trying to all pet her at once and Katie let one rip and the entire school ran away screaming. The actual building pulled itself off its foundation and scooted into the next lot, trying not to breathe. Fortunately, I have a cold so I was able to withstand the olfactory onslaught.

I’m pretty sure she’s smarter than me. I was feeling guilty for not playing with her enough yesterday (my boss lets me take her into the office) so I picked up an empty water bottle that she’d been using for a toy and started with the high-pitched you wanna play, girl? YOU WANNA PLAY? noises, and she just gave me this long, steady look that said, “No need to drag me into your codependent human insecurities. And by the way, I have an I.Q. of 204.” Then, as the sun from the skylight was finally hitting her dog bed, she curled up and took another nap.

We went to Disneyland last week.

Jackson’s first trip to the Magic Kingdom was all about the ladies. While we were waiting to meet our first princess, a woman got in line behind us and shouted to her kids, “We’ll ride Dumbo in a minute, first let’s do Snow White!” And I whispered to Jack, “Hey, this is the line to do Snow White.” Saying stupid things like that is one of the reasons Jack loves me.

That clinging-to-mom’s-leg act gets them every time.

A tiny toddler girl then snuck over while Jackson was thinking of something to say, and the woman playing Snow White pretended to be all surprised at the attention. She hugged the little girl and Jackson at the same time and said, in that little Snow White voice, “Ooo! Huggadoo!” She was incredibly nice.

The whole place is incredibly nice. I never saw a tattered awning, scuffed door, worn carpet, dulled surface, stray wad of trash, or surly employee the entire day. Everyone who works there seems to be seriously engaged in his or her job, which is amazing for service culture. They’re not smiling like ninnies the whole time, either, but all the people we talked to were smart and friendly and ready to help. And this in the heat of spring break season.

Snow White is a “face character,” i.e., a human being a kid can talk to. Minnie, on the other hand, has a giant head and seems to be inhabited by an otherwise unemployed mime. Nothing against mimes, you know! But Disneyland is doing an excellent job of keeping them off the streets.

You can go to specific Disneyland restaurants that have “character meals” where characters are walking from table to table and little kids are shrieking with delight. We went to what turned out to be a $100 buffet at Goofy’s Kitchen and I watched Jackson trail Aladdin around the restaurant half the night. God bless that man, though, he was really patient and expressed great interest in everything Jackson managed to stammer out, given his state of excitement.

Princess Aurora, though . . .

. . . can you see Jackson’s heart melting through his new hoodie fleece? LOOK AT THAT FACE. Seriously, he was one step away from a child-sized myocardial infarction. And now I understand why the face characters wear so much makeup:

Right. So the other day Jackson is pulling everything out from under the bathroom sink. I’m relatively sure there’s nothing dangerous under there, but just in case I poke my head in and say, “Um, don’t open any bottles and drink what’s inside, okay? Whatever it is will hurt your tummy and taste terrible.” Jackson holds up a bottle of nail polish remover. “Like that.” “Okay, mom,” he says, and goes back to his rifling. When I come back five minutes later he’s zipped open my old travel kit with the blue and white stripes that Jack always hated, and he’s got five tampons lined up in front of him on the bath mat — two with the pink line around them, two with the green, and one fatty with the yellow.

“You’re very organized,” I say.

“These are my bullets,” he says.

“What kind of gun do you use for those?” I ask.

“You shoot them out of YOUR BUTT!” he shouts.

I’ve explained a little about women and blood and so forth, so he has a sense of a tampon’s purpose.

Then he has a new idea. “Can I put one of these in me?”

“No,” I say. “You’re a boy. And they don’t go in your butt. Exit only.” I don’t want to go any deeper than that.

“Whatever, mom,” he says, unwrapping one.

We have guests over, a pregnant friend and her husband here to pick up our old changing table and take it with them to L.A. The husband sees Jackson playing with the tampons and says, “Hey! Didja ever put one of those in water? It’s really cool!”

There’s no better time to start developing a proclivity.

Later I fill up a cup of water and let Jackson dunk one in. As predicted, it swells up impressively. Unfortunately, the temptation to grab the string and swing it around the bathroom leaving a spiral of water on the walls is too strong for either of us to resist.

It’s also fun to squeeze out all the water. Your fingers leave big dents in the cotton.

Hello, Internet!

My name is Mrs. Kennedy and I play with tampons.

My old reasons for thinking certain people were cool were based on some criteria I formed in adolescence — something to do with the way their coat flapped in the wind, good glasses, and a book/film/music vocabulary that nested just beyond my reach. Yes, my ideal was someone who resembled a flammulated owl. Ideal what I’m not sure — friend? lover? dentist? It’s all been distorted by the mists of time and bad nutrition, and it barely matters anyway because last time I checked I found that the people I appreciate most in this world are the ones who are good with children.

They don’t necessarily have children of their own, but they’re the kind of people who don’t notice that the hem of their skirt’s in the dirt while they squat down to help a little kid get the wood chips out of his shoe, or they automatically offer a sweatshirt sleeve to a small runny nose, or they ignore a few minutes of crying in a restaurant while mom and/or dad sort out the problem.

We have a friend I call Dahlia — she’s actually one of Jack’s old girlfriends (I’ve written about her here and here) — and even though I don’t ever say much more than “Hello!” and “Great shoes!” to her, in my book she epitomizes the kind of grownup I adore. For a number of reasons. (1) She has the best shoes of anyone I know. (2) She’s got Texas blood, which isn’t always a plus, especially if, like me, you come from Colorado and are accustomed to having every snow-covered mountain in the state claimed by Texans sporting $4,000.00 ski boots and drunkenly shouting “YEEEE-HAAAWW!” every time they drop a mitten off the chair lift — she’s not that kind of Texas. She’s Ann Richards Texas. Molly Ivins Texas. Texas that gives a donation in your name to MoveOn.org for your Christmas present. And (3) she’s the reason I was able to sit down and eat dinner for an uninterrupted twenty minutes last Thursday night.

Last Thursday night there was an impromptu dinner party at our neighbors’ downstairs and Dahlia showed up. After four hours of fun, at about 11:00 p.m. I told Jackson it was time to go and this time I really, really, really meant it, and he turned around and said, “Dahlia, do you want to come upstairs and see my toys?” And she said, “YEAH!” like that was the best offer she’d had all night. So we all walked upstairs, and while I made a cup of tea and sorted bills at the table they sat on the floor and lined up every super hero toy in the place, amassing a cooperative army of Power Rangers, Teen Titans, Star Wars guys, and every member of the Justice League that still had his or her legs attached. They were so deeply in tune with their project and it knocked me out to realize how half-engaged I can be when I play with my own little boy sometimes. I usually have ten, maybe fifteen good minutes in me for Play-Do or watercolors or Let’s Pretend All The Big Ponies Are Shy And Don’t Want To Talk To The Little Pony before I start listening for my computer to ding! and tell me I have an e-mail, or start thinking about the dishes I haven’t done yet, or the songs I want to download from iTunes, or the ten minutes I’ll have to read my book before I fall asleep.

To sum up: It’s been said before but I’ll say it again: People who love kids are the best; it’s hard to be a fully-engaged parent 24/7, but it’s easier for people who drop in for dinner, especially if they like kids; the end.

COMING UP NEXT ON FUSSY: My son enjoys playing with tampons!

I’m sorry, I’m so fucking busy right now. Here’s a nice link, though. It’s interactive, and safe for work, too! Just click on a type of soda and enter your weight and it will tell you how many cans you’ll need to drink in one sitting to kill yourself.

Death By Caffeine

Last night I sat at a dinner table while three women yelled at Jack to start a blog THIS INSTANT. He had just told a riveting story about an interior designer and the job site port-a-potty. Unfortunately, his best stories are about work, and as we all know you just don’t blog about your job. I then tried to talk him into an occasional guest-blogging spot, but he just ignored me, basking as he was in the glow of his adoring (and increasingly drunk) audience. However, he did approve of the following NSFW link:

www.bootyvote.com

So now you can all be like my husband and start your day at Booty Vote. Because it’s your duty to vote for the better booty.

Today’s unironic agenda for thousands or perhaps millions of parents around the world:

Get begged to go to the theater and see Robots.

Get begged to go to the toy store and buy Robots toys.

Get begged to go to the grocery store and buy promotional breakfast “foods” with “free” Robots toys inside.

Guess what we’re doing today.

UPDATE: Pouring out an entire box of Froot Loops makes your garbage smell great!

Also, my blog was on Nightline last night! They had this fascinating story about this new thing called b l o g g i n g, and how people make friends on-line and help other people to lose their jobs. And they showed pictures of actual blogs. On TV! I know! It’s like Nightline has its finger on the pulse of the — on my pulse! Nightline has it’s finger on my pulse and it’s freaking me out!

Anyway, there they were, scrolling down my little Taco Bell-themed Web site. I now have Tivo’d evidence that millions of people got to see Jack’s new sweater for one full second. Further evidence that this blog will get far more attention if I focus on knitting.

Angry knitting. Grrr.