It’s been busy for us.  Work.  Putting the house on the market.  Everything.  This makes me stop.  Every time I watch it I get all glowy and my heart swells up.  Charlotte learned “You Are My Sunshine” at school and regales us with it often.  I can’t get enough of how she says “shunshine.”

You are our light, sweet girl.  We love your song.

We’ll be gone a few days.  Greyson and I are taking off on a little trip.  I’m so excited I could burst.  We’re basically making my geek pilgrimage to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  I promise to Instagram, Vine and Tweet my way through.  I also promise to wear my Time Turner necklace.  Yep, I have one haters.  Don’t hate.  See you soon!

Dear Daughter,

Your addiction has effected me negatively in the following ways:

• You can’t sit down to a meal at our home or go to a restaurant without getting a fix.  We as a family should be able to dine together without you having to have a drink every time.  
• When you drink you act differently, most often a hyper sugar high, followed by a tear filled-crash.
• I can no longer watch you fumble and get frustrated with the plastic straw in the carton.
• I have seen you scream and throw your carton on the Barnes & Noble train table, splashing your drink all over the Thomas the Tank Engine.
• I find cartons in your car seat and by your high chair.
• Your addiction makes me feel like I am failing you as a mother if I don’t give you what you want.
• If you don’t get a drink you throw a fit and cry until you do.  As your mother, I can no longer listen to your wails for “chokate milk!”

I am here today asking you to get help.   I will no longer be an enabler.  I will not be the person who fuels your addiction any more.  I can’t stand by and watch you douse Thomas & Friends in a sugar-fueled rage.  I no longer will let you pick a carton from the Starbucks cooler thinking it is “just this once.”  I now know that Ovaltine is not any better, it just made me feel better to give it to you because it had “vitamins.”

Sometimes I blame myself because I breast fed you for a year and I have to think the only thing as delicious as my milk is chocolate milk.

Please accept the gift of help we are offering you today.  We are now a “dry” home, free of sugar laced milk.  You will now only drink plain milk and water.  I know sometimes they give you juice at school and I can live with that, but we will no longer have chocolate milk in our house.

I love you and I want what is best for your teeth and our sanity as a family.

Love,

Mama

P.S. If this is ever really for drugs and not a tongue-in-cheek blog post, I will drag your butt to rehab.  If you refuse, I will send you to jail because I’m not putting up with that crap.  Consider chocolate milk your warning.

I don’t know what it is about Southerners, but it seems we like to put our initials on everything.  If there is enough room for a monogram, then by God, stitch and/or screen print it somewhere.  Ya’ll don’t hang your towels without your name on ’em, you gotta let everyone know they’re yours!

No surprise that when I had a baby I put her name on anything I could.  We worked hard to find the perfect name for her, so we were going to make sure “Charlotte Eva” was on every blanket, piece of decorative wall art, picture frame and sippy cup she owned.

So when I found Luna B. Tee I did the little squeal I do when I land on an Internet site selling products I adore.  This company is based out of Knoxville, Tennessee.  The south naturally, because they specialize in personalized children’s clothing and everything monogrammed.

Luna B. Tee sent me their Original Tee for Charlotte.  She loved it!  The Original Tee has the child’s first name initial with their first name all around the circle.  After we told her what it said she kept saying “C for Chalette!”  Even in North Carolina it has been chilly this February so I paired it with a hot pink undershirt to go with the pink/hot pink design they sent me.  She rocked it with the skinny jeans, furry boots and pigtails for school this week.

As two-year-old’s do, she came home with a bunch of stuff on her new shirt.  I put a little stain remover spray on it.  Voila!  No stains.  This shirt is seriously soft too.  It’s thick and high quality.  I have washed it twice and it has not shrunk up or gotten all misshapen the way a lot of kids clothes do.

This weekend we paired it with navy and hot pink leggings and a jean skirt.  Please excuse the blurry cell phone action shot of us in a restaurant.

After her nap, Charlotte decided a shirt this fantastic didn’t need pants.  She just rocked her snow boots with it.  These boots have only been necessary twice this year.  We got about an inch each time.  Okay, so in the South we do monograms and overreact to snow.  That is what we do.

You can show off your kid’s awesome name too with The Original!  Luna B. Tee is giving one away to a lucky Somebody’s Parents reader!  Get one for your kid, a present, whatever.  Entering is so easy and you don’t have to put on pants to win it, right Charlotte?!

1. Leave a comment here telling me which color you would like, and what name you would choose.
2. “Like” Luna B. Tee on Facebook.
3. Follow Luna B. Tee on Twitter.
4. Do the same for me here and here.
5. If you Tweet about the giveaway or share it on Facebook you get another entry.

That’s it!  I’ll pick a winner next week.  I promise you’ll see a ton of gift ideas for friends and family on the site too.  Luna B. Tee is offering Somebody’s Parents readers a 10% discount with the Coupon Code #Some10.

Disclaimer:  Luna B. Tee sent me a totally cute t-shirt.  My opinions, however, are totally free and totally honest.

I’ve told you all before about how we have the greatest, most amazeballs people for friends.  (They would laugh at my use of the term “amazeballs” and subsequently make fun of me.)

We had this band of jokers over to our place for the “Big Game” last night.  I wonder if the National Football League will grab me by my amazeballs if I call it what it was.  It was the Beyonce concert!  I’m kidding.  We had our friends over to watch the Super Bowl.

Charlotte had a bit of a cough and runny nose.  Charlotte’s friend Josh, a fellow two-year-old, came over too.  I warned his parents of her slight cold symptoms and they had no problem with this.  They are both daycare kids and it’s February, after all.  Colds are just part of their lives like sippy cups and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Murphy’s Law of parental party planning states: “The child will seem fine all day and then when the doorbell rings she will hack all over everyone.  If your guests are enjoying food with paper plates on their laps, the child will walk by and cough on their eye level entrees.

I apologize in advance to our friends for their colds.  Please remember what amazeballs friends we are.

Come for the beer, stay for the boogers.

This is a collection of some of Charlotte’s newest things:

Do you see a theme?  Well played Disney marketers, well played.  Good job getting your characters on everything from the cup my kid drinks from to the training pants on her little hiney.  Disney has an even further reach than the toddler department.  I’m interested to see what’s next.  I’m not picking on Disney, exclusively.  Sesame Street seems to have their hands on preschool merchandise as well.  You should see all the Elmo stuff in our house.  The thing that has been sticking  out to me lately is PRINCESS.

She loves those snow boots.  I’m a good little suburbanite mommy so we searched the aisles of Target for the perfect pair.  I gave her the choice of all the boots on the shelf and she said “Pincess!”  We went to a 3-year-old girl’s party this weekend.  Princess theme.

Hmm.  I’m not sure how I feel about all this.  I’ve read the criticism of the whole princess industry and how it’s making our daughters image obsessed, subservient prince-seekers who will end up on the pole if we let them watch The Little Mermaid.  I’m worried I’ll have to start dressing like Pam on “The Office.”  She was “Dr. Cinderella” for Halloween to show her daughter positive princess role models.

Courtesy: NBC

I love princess stuff.  Love it.  I can try to deny it, but I’m a pink, glittery girl-girl at heart and always have been.  We watched “Tangled” this weekend because I LOVE THAT MOVIE!  Of course Charlotte loved it too.  I find the more recent princess movies have much stronger, more confident female leads then classics like “Snow White” and “Cinderella.”  I think they send better messages.

I took a class in college called Gender and Media Culture and it ruined every story for me, ever.  This is the class where we had to watch “The Accused” and “Boys Don’t Cry.”  We got to analyze the rape scenes and discuss how the Cinderella Syndrome is a worldwide epidemic, forever infecting women’s psyches.  Apparently all the princess fairy tales of our youth are the reason women end up contestants on “The Bachelor” because the only thing they’ve ever been told is that they have to find a man to be happy.  Oh, did you know that EVERYTHING is a metaphor for deflowering a virgin girl?  I didn’t either until I took this class.

So, you see my dilemma.  I decided to take it easy and just go with it.  She’s just a little girl and princesses are just a part of that.  If I make a big deal about it, it becomes a big deal.

She got that “Tangled” book pictured above with a little hair clip of Rapunzel’s hair.  I showed her how it lit up and you put it in your hair.  I was never more proud of her after what she did next.  She didn’t want it in her hair.  She took it and made it a stethoscope.  She “listened” to our hearts before making it the thing doctors use to look in your ears.  Then she said, “I doctor!”

I don’t think I’ll need to dress like Dr. Cinderella after all.  My little princess is already practicing medicine.