Take this simple quiz below to enter a contest for a free, mommy-approved, full-coverage biohazard suit and matching gas mask. Suit/mask combo comes in three delightful color choices of hot pink, camo, and puke green.

1. Are the words toxic diarrhea, snot, and buttsweat part of your regular vocabulary?

2. Do you typically or have you ever caught your child's vomit purposefully in your open hands?

3. Can you clean up a two-year-old diarrhea blowout with a single wet wipe?

4. Does your child think it is hilarious to fart on you?

1. You find yourself watching Max and Ruby while your children are not even home—and you are enjoying it.

2. You discuss the contents of your baby's diaper and your nipple drama with random strangers.

3. You realize at the end of the day that the only thing you have eaten is the half-chewed leftovers from your children's plates.

4. The contents of your purse include: wallet, keys, cell phone, two diapers, antibacterial wet wipes, regular wipes, a Spider Man figurine, three bouncy balls, two packages of organic baby puffs in sweet potato.... more >>

Thanks to a visit to one of my new favorite blogs, Parenting ad Absurdum, I was recently introduced to this hilarious YouTube video entitled “Pregnant Women Are Smug.”

Do you think pregnant women are smug? No longer interested in hearing the details of any subject that does not pertain to vaginal mucous, folic acid, stretch marks, or things you can purchase at Babies R Us?

I did.

That is … until I became one.... more >>

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Superbooby!

Hip hip hooray for Superbooby—everyone's favorite family superhero. Able to scale tall buildings, retrieve infants and toddlers from dangerous situations like un-babyproofed bathrooms and chemical storage cabinets, and nurse them skillfully in every acrobatic position imaginable.

Football hold? Cradle hold? Cross-cradle hold? Kamikaze hold? Abacadabra hold?

Never fear! Superbooby can do them all with ease, confidence, and poise—and all while preparing delightful organic dinners and p.... more >>

When you have a new baby in the house, crying becomes the wallpaper of your life. Crying is the background music that infiltrates all your experiences, good or bad.

There's sleeping and crying. Eating and crying. Washing the dishes and crying. Jamming groceries into the refrigerator and crying. Opening cans of tuna and crying. Watching the dog crap on your freshly mopped kitchen floor and crying. Talking on the phone to your mother and crying. Attempting to watch So You Think You Can Dance and crying. Using the toilet and crying. Using too much toil.... more >>

It's 3:45 a.m. as I walk up the pathway to the home of my friend Patricia. It's very dark on her street, but the moon is big and full. It casts a gentle glow on the trees, houses, and cars around me. Everything is calm and quiet, which feels impossible since something so incredible just happened. As I approach the door, I can see that although the blinds are closed, the house is ablaze inside.

I give a gentle knock on the door. From inside I hear Patricia's husband's voice. “Come in,” he says.

I don't know what I'm expecting to see. Blood.... more >>

My father finally got a cell phone. For years, he resisted. He was adamant and philosophically against them. “Cell phones are ridiculous! They're absurd!” he proclaimed, the blood rising to his face. “Why do I need to carry a phone everywhere I go? There is no need for such urgent communication. If someone needs to tell me something, my home phone is good enough.”

He had a point, I thought. Except for emergencies. But my father said that he had never had an emergency he couldn't handle in his past 60 years without a cell phone, so why.... more >>

Before you have a child, the idea of losing a child is unfathomable. I remember listening to radio reports about people whose children managed to get out of the house and lost in the woods for days on end and I would think, “How is this possible? What were those parents doing that they would manage to lose their own child?”

I also thought that those little leashes that people used on their children were barbaric. I couldn't imagine why someone would want to keep their precious child on a leash like a bad dog.

Well, now I know. more >>

Somewhere during the first or second month of being a new parent, you will be up in the middle of the night with your new baby. It will be approximately three o'clock in the morning and you will have already achieved three delightful pockets of sleep that night of 15 minutes apiece. There will be a beautiful moon in the sky and the stars will be twinkling. But you will not notice. You will be staring into the face of your darling infant, who is truly darling, except that at this particular moment he is screaming so hard that you wonder if his lungs will liberate fro.... more >>

My husband Danny is an army veteran. He served eight years in the military right after high school. Sometimes, he misses it and enjoys telling stories of the good old days. He also likes to tell me that I would have been a good soldier because I can eat, poop and shower in three minutes or less. Oh, and also because of the loudness of some of my burps. (This is his interpretation … I think my burps are quite delicate and ladylike.) Anyway, one of the stories that my husband likes to tell is from his days in Advanced Individual Training (AIT).

During A.... more >>

The other day my husband Danny changed our son Diego's diaper. He walked into the room, carrying the folded diaper carcass in his hand. “Oh good!” I said. “He pooped.”

“Yep,” Danny acknowledged, patting the smelly white bundle.

“What did it look like?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “It was poop.”

“Come on,” I encouraged. “Give me the details.”

“Seriously, it was just regular poop.” He gave me a weird look and started.... more >>

No one likes to admit this, but everybody says a bad word at one point or another. Maybe you are cutting organic heirloom tomatoes on your kitchen counter and the knife slips and you almost slice off your thumb. Or maybe you slam your hand in the car door. Or maybe you are just getting rowdy while talking on the phone with your sister about her loser boyfriend. Who knows? But somehow, it slips out. "@#@@@*%%!"

Oh dear. How embarrassing! You look up, hoping your baby is distracted and didn't notice, but no such luck. Your one-year-old baby is staring at y.... more >>

You are probably one of those women who looked gorgeous and radiant while you were pregnant, aren't you? You probably only gained weight in your belly and no one could even tell you were pregnant until you were six months along. Did you wear your regular jeans until you were eight months pregnant using the rubber band technique? I bet you did. I bet you don't even know what I'm talking about when I say varicose veins, hemorrhoids, stretch marks, heartburn and excessive flatulence. Are you one of those women who enjoyed your pregnancy so much that you pra.... more >>

When I was a kid, for a number of years we did not have a TV. My dad decided that television was unimproving and so he threw ours over the second floor balcony. He was dramatic and a little bit crazy. But he was also right. Television really is just a brain drain and current marketing attempts to convince us that our children are practically attending preschool while watching Dora the Explorer are just plain false.

However, at the same time, TV does have its own special purpose. It is your very own around-the-clock, low-budget babysitter. You will h.... more >>

My grandma was an amazing storyteller. Whenever my sister and I would visit as children, one of the highlights of our stay would be waking up early and running to my grandparents' room so we could cuddle in their bed and hear the stories my grandma told from her own childhood. One of my all-time favorites was the story of Pimple the Duck.

Pimple was an ugly duckling. Unlike his brother and sisters, who were beautiful Mallards, Pimple was an ugly shade of nothing, according to my Grandma. Not white, not brown, but some dirty color that no one could .... more >>

My husband went to work the other day with glitter on his face. Unintentionally, of course. It was probably the shiny residue of some art project I had been doing with the kids that somehow made it onto his face via a few grubby little hands we all know and love. He was walking through the hall in the hospital he works at when the respiratory therapist passed by and said, “Is that glitter on your face?”

“You're seeing things,” my husband replied.

“Not really,” she countered. “Is this your attempt at a ma.... more >>

When my friend Juliana and her husband Matt lived in Cuba for a year, their yard was filled with avocado trees. From their kitchen window, they watched the avocados grow from tiny green bumps into large beautiful fruit. They imagined tasting the creamy goodness when the avocados had grown ripe enough to eat. One day, just when the avocados appeared to be nearing perfection, a group of boys came and picked every last one. Although Juliana was incensed, she didn't stop them, but watched them from the window as they emptied the trees systematically right before her eye.... more >>

The other day, my friend Silvina and I were at her home planning some preschool classes together. In the space of 10 minutes, our 2-year-olds unearthed a purple marker and managed to decorate the entire downstairs of her home. Floors, walls, tables, carpet…their artistic masterpiece could be described as nothing less than complete. I was mortified. But surprisingly, Silvina was unfazed. “It's okay,” she said with a smile. “I'll just get the Magic Eraser.”

Magic Eraser? How exactly did I manage to make it through five ye.... more >>

Most new moms are very picky about what goes into their babies' stomachs. This is a good thing. But at some point, your child will be introduced to junk food. Junk food is so much a part of our culture, that unless you live on a commune (which would probably be a good thing), your child is going to find his or her way to the Coke machine eventually. It may be a relative who offers your 13-month-old a cupcake. Or it may be your older child who gives your baby a sip of grape soda. Or you may be at a picnic, feeding your 2-year-old organic baby food that you made f.... more >>

There are a lot of firsts when you have a new baby. Of course, there are many obvious ones that are so poignant and sentimental they could be the footage of a über successful Kodak commercial that would bring all new moms to tears. The first time you hear your baby cry. The first time you look into your baby's eyes. The first time you count your baby's toes. The first time you nurse your baby. The first time you take your baby home from the hospital. The first time your baby smiles at you, etc...

There are also a lot of other first that are a littl.... more >>

Before I was a mom, I never really understood the whole mom/van phenomenon. It was beyond me why people became mothers and then suddenly needed a van to seat eight people. Is it just me or does a baby add one person to your family or six?

Not to mention, these mommy vans always managed to look like they worked the night-shift as a homeless shelter. No matter when you checked, you would always find half-eaten French fries, chicken nuggets, bits of dried up cheese, old milk containers, tiny straws from juice boxes, balled up pampers, grimy blankets, stuffed an.... more >>

Having a baby changes a lot of things in ones life. For me, it sparked a massive change in lifestyle, made me look inside myself more deeply, caused me to reevaluate my friendships and even changed my marriage.

Before you have kids, being married is a lot like dating. You get to spend all your time doing whatever you want, whenever you want. You see movies, go dancing, eat out, travel together, go to sports games and have plenty of sex. You don't have to plan ahead. You just do whatever feels right in the moment. Until we had our first baby, I still felt.... more >>

Everyone wants to believe that they are doing the very best thing for their children at all times. No one wants to admit that they are doing something that is perceived by the general public as harmful to their children. For this reason, conscientious mothers these days would like you to believe the following:

1. Their toddlers rarely watch TV and if they do, they are viewing only wholesome, politically correct, educational programs like Dora the Explorer and Curious George and Super Why.

2. They never ever let their babies under the age of two watch.... more >>

With the first baby, most mothers are very particular. I know I was. This is your first baby and you want everything to be perfect. I spent hours organizing the diaper bag before the baby even came. I spent obscene amounts of time thinking about which type of baby wipes I wanted to use. I bought more bottles of hand sanitizer than I'd care to mention and stationed them around the house in various pre-determined locations. I set up multiple changing stations and outfitted them with pampers, wipes, burp cloths, diaper cream and 3 changes of clothes just in case. I.... more >>

If you are like me, before you were a mother, you had a lot of ideas about how you were going to do things when you became a mother.

You would walk around the mall and see these mothers yelling at their children and think, I would never do that. I will never lose my temper and humiliate my children. You would see your relatives at family functions and watch how their children were running crazed through other people's homes and terrorizing the pets and jumping on the furniture and you would think, I will never let my children get out of contro.... more >>