PhotoShoot Sunday 13 January

First, a word from this week’s sponsor: Christ the King Brownie Troop #2501

It’s Girl Scout Cookie time, and boy do they recruit young: even Ali’s Brownie troop has been called up. If you want to order through Troop #2501, let me know what you want and I’ll add you to the order form. If you go to this site you can see the cookies (All are $3.50 a box) and nutritional info: http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/cookies/cookies_main.html .

The order forms are due Jan. 28, so please let me know ASAP if you’re in.

If you’re in town and need a cookie fix, it’s possible that Karin Ogden will finagle us into the Jordan YMCA and the Athenaeum downtown for the little troopers to sell face-to-face. I’ll let you know if and when, although it seems there will be an obligation to actually work out while you’re there…

Now, to continue my lament that Alison is growing up too fast, Thursday she came home with the phone number and address that she’d been given by A BOY at school! Worse yet, they’d arranged a date!

I looked at the note, which spelled out the address of one Will Meyer, his phone number and the time of their planned rendezvous.

“Ali, I think I’d better check with Will’s mommy, don’t you think?” I said, fully aware even as the words fell out of my mouth that by using the word “mommy” rather than “mom” that I was mentally minimizing the importance of this event.

“Oh, that’s alright, Mom. You don’t have to. We have it all arranged,” she said.

I called anyway. Will’s MOMMY was just as surprised as I was and had gotten the same answer: it was all arranged and there need be no parental involvement. After some discussion, the PLAY date is this afternoon. On the agenda are a game of Uno and much trading of Pokemon cards.

While I may fret about whether this is the beginning of Alison wanting to date, my cousin-in-law Mary will repeat what she said at our annual Kids Night Out dinner in Maine last month. Jen and I were discussing with the rest of the table whether Mary was too lenient with her freshman-in-art-school/college daughter and her boyfriend. I know what you’re thinking, but we’d all had wine and it was a fun conversation, which ended in enough laughter that we scared away most of the other guests in the restaurant.

As we (OK it was mostly me) poked unabashedly into her and Mark (and maybe Courtney's) business, Mary turned to me and said: “You can’t say anything: YOUR daughter has been sleeping with boys since she was 2!”

As they say in France, Tou -fricking- che!

I’m still keeping an eye on this Will character….I know Drew and Alex – Ali’s first and still true boy friends. (That’s two words, not one.) Will may need some watching…

The photo this week is of the newest addition to the Chez Reed: Grace Reed.

She’s a Betta and the last of Ali’s Christmas presents. She would have arrived earlier but Ali was on punishment for tricking her babysitter into giving her 6 pieces of candy. She’d been banned from using Aunt Cindy’s Target gift card and from buying her fish for a full week. Like any good prisoner, Alison created a count-down calendar and had been marking off the days. When she was released, she ran to the fridge, marked the last “X” and then balled up the calendar, threw it away and danced around the kitchen singing, “I’m off my punishment! I’m off my punishment!”