I'll tickle your tummy if you tickle mine...

So this week has been all about exposure -- how was that for a cheap and attention-seeking intro?  Rewind to a little email that popped into my inbox earlier this week, from one PR guy in NYC asking if I would do some advertising for Pampers.  Yeah, I had to re-read that several times, too!  The one and only Pampers asking would I share their new tipsheet with my readers.  My readers. It still makes me LMAO.  After my sides started to hurt, I braced myself and dared to think BIG.  What if people other than friends and family and acquaintances personally besotted with Little Green actually find something here that they enjoy?  Let me start off by saying that I know diddley about marketing and PR.  I am on Facebook and Twitter but only just. And the "tweeting" especially is still something of a mystery.  Who really has time to tweet throughout the day?  I mean, don't you have work to do that someone somewhere, for some strange reason, pays you to do?  And if like me you are a stay-at-home-at-the-moment mom: don't you have skyscrapers of laundry to sort, nutritious lunches and snacks to make in between the cups of java and Ellen repeats? 

Having said all that, a little exposure wouldn't hurt the Little Green blog one bit. So I chanced my arm, as Mr Green is wont to say, and told Pampers ok, then: quid pro quo ('cause, really, who doesn't defer when things turn all scary and Latin?).  Well, they haven't exactly bitten my arm off, but it was a first step of contact and who knows what may come of it in the future.  It's all tummy tickling and back scratching in the social media world.  And though I'm new to it, I'm catching on.  I am quickly making friends and alienating others.  It's a dizzying circus of networks and blogs out there, one which I can't help but feel is yet another excuse to further slice up my already thinly sliced Life Pie.  How do professional mothers do it?  The whole time management thing is Chinese calligraphy to me.  An exquisite and elusive art form I've no hope of mastering in this lifetime let alone the next... 

As it stands the hours of my clock are already compartmentalized to a frightening extent.  When I collapse after LGO is down for the night, some internal switch clicks and I practically turn to Mr Green and say, Ok, you're on.  It's officially Hubby Time. You have my undivided attention for a couple of hours, so make it count.  By the same token, I can't stand to watch TV in an aimless, channel hopping fashion anymore.  Ditto goes for this latest round of Winter Olympics.  I adored watching figure skating and bobsleigh as a girl and now, even though it only comes 'round every four years, and this time it's in my own backyard (one big ass backyard but still....) it's like tick, tock. Another commercial? You only have my attention for 19 more minutes; make 'em count, baby!  If there is a better way, heavenly moms, I'm all ears...

As for the little one, who surely deserves a look-in since it's his blog, after all -- he's swell.  By and large.  Tantrums are increasing in frequency and in ferocity and that is a whole other post I have yet to write.  But this is balanced by the odd, too cute moment that forces me to gush here and you to suffer through it.  There is a framed photo on our end table taken at Mr Green's work do with the three of us dressed in our Christmas best.  It's a nice photo, all things considered, no blinkies and everyone is looking at the camera for once.  Anyway, our little prince delights in picking it up and pointing to each person in the photo and I name each one in turn, saying 'fa-mi-lee'.  Loving this ritual, he then kisses the photo.  Priceless.

Another, somewhat less enchanting habit of his of late is to laugh while mom jiggles her post-pregnancy "jelly".  He seems to find my crater-like belly button equally riveting, and the premature demise of my flat stomach a hoot.  Glad someone does.  Thirty years from now I will no doubt have the last laugh, when I give his beer belly a good prod in front of his girlfriend (assuming he can get one what with the bulge overhanging his belt). Here's to the future...

Oh, and before I forget.  Pampers...  Here are their top parenting tips.  Of course I wholeheartedly endorse their slogan that "when a baby is born, so are the parents". Moreover, I have been prodigiously using their products on my son's butt since his conception.  (Someone smarter than me can do the math, and I'm sure it's truly scary and involves lots of numbers.)  Still, just think of what could have been if the tummy tickling had been reciprocal.  Their logo tattooed across LG's ample "cheeks".  I have the makings of a media whore in me yet.  Too bad for Pampers they didn't see, and harness, my awesome potential.