Yup, I admit it: For years, I've been on a secret mission to integrate the bookshelves and toy chests of a bunch of my daughters' white friends. Every time Mari and Lila were invited to a birthday party, I'd send them with fancy gift bags full of copies of Debbie Allen's "Dancing in the Wings," bell hooks' "Home Made Love," and Faith Ringgold's "Tar Beach," plus a chocolate Barbie for good measure.

Subversive? Yes.

Necessary? Very.

See, the majority of the parents of my daughters' friends, no matter how kind and smart and sweet they are, didn't buy black books, dolls, or movies for their children. I don't think they were being racist or striking out against diversity, by any stretch; it just never seemed to really occur to them that maybe, just maybe, their daughters would identify with the pretty, round-faced girl pie in "Home Made Love," or Sassy, the talented but shy ballerina in "Dancing in the Wings" -- or that there would be value in letting their daughters read their sweet, insightful, beautifully human stories.

It was just supposed to be a quick trip to Target for baby wipes. And, you know, all the other things you end up buying at Target when you're there, but I SWEAR, I was just going to dash in and dash out. As well as you can dash with two toddlers in tow.

My husband's on a business trip this whole week and Monday morning I set the dial on my brain to Laid Back Who Cares If You Are Wearing Pajamas And Have Peanut Butter In Your Hair At Four In The Afternoon Mom. I wanted to be easy on my kids and easy on myself. So when Jack wanted to pop into the Target Dollar Section I was all, "Fine! Super! Let's BUY STUFF!" Really, Internet! The whole PLAN was to buy my kids a cheap, stupid, useless something or other. How could this possibly fail?!

Jack, of course, wanted everything. The pet clothes. The stamps. The socks. The stickers. Those weird bendable flower things. I picked out a plastic toy watering can for Molly and right next to those were a bunch of sandbox toys: shovels, rakes, that kind of thing. Since we've been playing in our sandbox nearly every afternoon, I picked one out and showed it to Jack. "Look Jack!" I said excitedly, in my I'm Such A Great Mom For Buying You A Present For No Reason! voice. "What about a SHOVEL?"

Jack, however, was holding a whisk. A WHISK. And not even a good whisk. The metal loops were all bent out of shape and sad looking. Jack said, "I want this."

Sometimes it seems I go out of my way to make parenting and domesticity more complicated than it ever has to be. It happens slowly, this convolution of my motherly and homakerly duties. Sometimes I don't even notice its happening until its spiraled out of control. A good example of this is the abyss that is Wanda's sock drawer.

Wanda's sock drawer has been 7 years in the making. It started when Laylee was in utero and everywhere I went cute little baby socks would scream, "BUY ME! FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY! THERE'S A LITTLE SHEEP ON THE SIDE OF MY CUFF!" I would of course buy the screaming sheep socks in several different colors and sizes. It was easy to corral them because I kept them in their packages until her feet had outgrown the last size of socks, move the small ones to the "next baby" box and graduate to the larger size. Over the months of her babyhood we were gifted socks, new and hand-me-down, all in different Baby Colors.

The problem with Baby Colors is that they're all basically white with just a slight tint of color that looks like they may have accidentally gone through with the dark load in the washer turning them "Baby Blue," "Baby Pink," "Baby Yellow," "Baby Beige," "Baby Ecru," "Baby Cream," or "Baby Off-White." I believe some of them were dyed those colors at the factory by a cruel cackling woman who wanted to make mothers suffer for bringing these little germ spreaders into the world. I'm sure some of the socks actually went through the wash with a pair of jeans or a Christmas table cloth. It's really hard to tell the difference.

On Friday I did two things that I am not proud of, but I’m going to share them with you because, well, that’s what blogs are all about:

1. I took a pregnancy test even though I knew there was almost no way I could be pregnant.

2. I called my doctor’s office and told the receptionist I was worried I might be having a heart attack even though all it felt like was heartburn.

This makes me laugh out loud every time I read it. Probably because I am not pregnant and I did not have a heart attack. Am I a hypochondriac? I guess so. I never used to be but I believe that having cancer gives you a free pass at it for the rest of your life (how can you ever be sure that something is nothing if something turned out to be cancer that one time?). Still, Friday marked a new low for me. But, while my worry turned out to be for naught, it wasn’t unwarranted....

First, I want to share the great news -- Time Out Chicago has shown the Cosmo Mom some love! They wrote a nice article about my parenting.com blog, specifically the dual life I lead as a working mom at Playboy, and working mom-blogger at Parenting. Check it out when you have a sec; I'd love to hear your thoughts! The article's in their print edition, and online here, with a bonus photo gallery. Thanks, Time Out Chicago!

So, I'm blogging from the road again, this time from Austin, Texas, where I've been attending the SXSW Interactive conference since last Thursday. A SXSWi virgin, I feel a little out of my element among all the tech geeks and new media wunderkinds, but in a good way. I came here with a couple of my lady friends from Playboy; we're here to soak up the atmosphere, and check out as many panels, discussions and networking events with said tech geeks and new media wunderkinds as possible, over five days of the festival. It's been a really productive trip so far: On Sunday, I got a makeover (like I said, productive!) from pro stylist Jo Blackwell-Preston, along with Rachel Sklar, Editor-at-Large at Mediaite, who cut off 10 inches of her hair for Locks of Love, for a panel we both participated in later that day called "Extreme Makeover: Profile Edition" (yes, even moms need makeover tips for their online profiles). Blackwell-Preston advised me that, as a new mom, I shouldn't do anything drastic to my hair (or profile probably) -- she should know, she's a mom of three -- so she gave me just a few layers for my new mommy 'do. I'll post a link to the photos as soon as they're online.

So Lila gets an invitation to a schoolmate’s birthday sleepover and before she can tumble off the bus good, she’s shoving the little glossy card in my hand: “Can I go, please, please, puh-leeze, Mommy?”

All that begging and you’d think I don’t let her go anywhere.

And er, um, you’d be right.

Yes, I raise my hand and readily admit that I’m a play date blocker. Like, on the highest levels. If I don’t know your mama, I haven’t been to your house for any significant length of time, I haven’t a clue who all lives there, and your kid’s home-training is a little questionable? Nope—my kid’s not coming over.

When we move out of this house we're only taking one crib with us. That's right: someone's getting himself a Big Boy Bed.

I'm not THAT nervous about it. For one thing, he's been sleeping in twin beds at both grandparents' house for over a year now. He still doesn't know what to do with a pillow and scorns the concept of blankets (WHY?) but he doesn't freak out and he falls asleep, and the thing I suppose most people worry about -- falling out -- has never happened. And if it did? Eh. He'd survive. I'm sure the spill he took on our front sidewalk today produced worse injuries than a potential bedtime crash.

Last week I posted some thoughts about the state of our public school system. I had just come from a great speech and I was all fired up for reform, improvements, and making quality education available to everyone...especially my own kids. Laylee had been complaining of boredom and, although she talks frequently about how much she loves her teacher, I was worried that in first grade, she was already falling prey to a broken system. I wondered, "Maybe the whole way that education is set up, funded and supported in this country is not meeting her needs and although I feel optimistic that change is on the way, maybe it will come too late for the current generation."

I didn't realize that education reform would be such a hot button issue. I mean, I know that people have wildly differing views on how we should conduct reform but I didn't think that stating it was needed would make people feel hurt or offended. I thought, "Obviously if nearly 30% of American students never graduate from high school, then something is wrong." If, as Jeff Raikes stated in his speech, "Right now, in the midst of a historic recession, there is a gap of at least 12,000 jobs in STEM fields in Washington [State]. Double-digit unemployment, yet STEM industries have to look overseas for workers," then something needs to change to prepare American students to step up and fill those jobs.

Is Nora (at 7 weeks in this pic) already getting gypped? 

I am the second child in my family and always felt like I got plenty of attention but now that I have my own second child I am suddenly feeling…short shrifted. How could I not have been? Not only was I the second child, I was the second girl. And I had colic! Obviously I got the hand-me-down clothes and never sat shotgun, but it’s more than that. With your first baby, motherhood is so new and exciting and scary and all encompassing. Number two is exciting, of course, but there just isn’t as much time to revel in it. Because you’re divided—your attention is divided, your patience is divided, your threshold for crap is divided (though, miraculously, not your love...that just doubles). You can’t possibly be everything to your number two because number one is still there demanding that you make him pancakes...with strawberries not bananas! 

In our little family the SCS began before Nora was even born—if it weren’t for the project pregnancy blog (and the Cheetos cravings) I would barely have noticed I was pregnant. I never even got on the web to see if she was the size of a lemon or a squash or a grapefruit. With Alex, I couldn’t tear myself away from that stuff. And since her arrival 8 weeks ago today, she has continued getting quietly gypped.

Here’s how:

I'm a perpetual procrastinator, which is a huge challenge for me especially since I'm a writer -- my career hinges on my ability to meet deadlines. But I've always felt I do my best work under intense deadline pressure -- a lot of creative types say that. It's like I purposely wait till the last minute to start something, knowing I'm going to make myself completely nuts trying to finish it on time.

I think my proclivity for procrastination is what caused me to wait to marry and have kids till I was older. If you consider the fact that I went out with my now-husband four or so years before we actually started dating, it makes perfect sense. And then I subsequently jammed just about every major life-altering decision into one-and-a-half year's time: serious relationship, engagement, marriage, pregnancy, promotion, house, car, puppy, baby, etc. Like I said, I work well under pressure.