Happy Birthday, Lisa and You're Welcome...

10 Things You Need to Know About My Dear Sister on Her Birthday...

10. She is insane a very hard worker. Lisa works 2 official jobs, 3 if you count being a full-time mom to 3 crazy kids and 4 if you count Twitter. I have no idea how much sleep she gets—I fear none—and have absolutely no earthly idea how she balances everything. I can barely get out the door in the morning without spontaneously combusting. It’s shocking.

9. She is very passionate. Lisa has many opinions. Lisa talks with her hands. Lisa has many opinions that she expresses with her hands. Whether it’s politics or publishing or being a mom or being a friend/sister/daughter/woman, Lisa is never afraid to speak up and voice her opinion. We’ll have brief detailed 9-hour-long conversations about some random issue and she’ll encourage me to “blog about it” as I slowly back away with my hands up. But she’s never afraid to put it out there. It’s pretty cool.

8. She’ll get on board with any diet, exercise plan, lifestyle change, hairstyle transformation, etc. that one may propose. I love people like this. All I have to do is call and say, “I saw this diet complete with a meal plan, want to try it? And before I’m even at “meal plan” she’s IN and driving to the grocery store to buy beets and a kettle bell. Then we’ll do something for 8 or so days and go back to eating ice cream from the container at 11 PM. It’s awesome.

7. She’s incredibly sarcastic—but you probably knew that already. She scares the hell out of my daughter Lydia and banks on the fact that she’ll be the favorite aunt by the time Lydia’s able to understand sarcasm. Let’s just hope Lydia forgets about all the times I forced Lisa to run upstairs and yell at her for waking up too early from a nap. I have no idea why we thought this was a good idea. Fail.

6. She makes me cry at least once per day. I have no clue if anyone else would find what we find funny as hilarious, but she cracks me up. The more random and inappropriate the better, which confirms the fact that I have a very sick and twisted mind. The bonus is that as I’m eating ice cream at 11 PM at night I can reflect on the fact that during one of our brief detailed 9-hour-long conversations, I got an ab workout in at the same time. Score.

5. She’s the brains behind this operation (and do not let her tell you any different). Our editors can pose some sort of issue with the plot of our book and she’ll pause for a second (while I hem and haw) and spew out some genius solution that simultaneously fixes fourteen other broken areas of the manuscript. It’s an art.

4. If you walk into a library or bookstore with Lisa, she will have read almost every single book in stock. I’ve accused her of skimming, which didn’t go over well, and/or lying, but her retention is convincing. When we were little, the amount of books she’d read baffled me. In addition, if you press “Guide” on your television remote, she will have watched at least one episode and often entire seasons of any given television series. The same goes for movies. “All I have to say is, don’t see Contagion.” “How are you not watching Gallery Girls?” “Be sure to DVR Underemployed!” Review number 10 on my list and your mind will officially be blown. There’s no way she sleeps.

3. She washes her floors every night. And asks me if I think this is crazy. I usually don’t say anything. Refer back to number 10 and 4.

2. Lisa doesn’t take herself (or really anyone) too seriously. If you accidentally take yourself too seriously, she will totally call you out on it and you’ll feel ashamed. This is a good thing. Nothing good ever comes from taking one’s self too seriously. Nothing.

1.  She’s my best friend. But you already knew that. When I was ten (with a very unfortunate overbite and some heavy duty orthodontia), I never would have dreamed that I’d grow up to love my sisters. I couldn’t see past, “Mo-om she’s looking at me!” spat across the dinner table. And now the three of us actually hang out…for fun and force our kids to like each other. Love.

 Happy Birthday, Lisa. Take the day off, you over-achiever.

The Mommy Brag

Lately I've been seeing lots of posts about two year olds who are doing amazing things. These kids are are doing some crazy shit like counting to twenty, identifying shapes and colors, and speaking in full sentences. To be totally honest, I've been feeling a little jealous of these baby geniuses. Lucky for me today Ben did something that totally blows those baby Einsteins out of the water. He learned how to get dressed in his own pajamas!

We are so proud.

Tell The Truth Tuesday - Dear Teen Me

We have a mega truth this Tuesday and we're telling all to our teen selves over at DearTeenMe.com. Click for the awkward pictures, stay for the random advice!

HUGE thanks fellow Sourcebooks author, Miranda Kenneally (Have you read her books yet? No? Buy them immediately. Seriously. You will not be disappointed.) for including us!

Balance and the Mommy Writer by guest author Natalie Bahm

Every so often we have extra bad days. Maybe the kids are being difficult or our husbands are cranky or we went to bed too late and are over-tired. We might complain in a two hour long phone conversation, write a nasty email or even cry in the shower. And then all of a sudden, we get an email from a fellow author whose heart was touched by a little boy she'd never met. And whoosh. All of the sudden, everything is put back into perspective. Thank you, Natalie, for bringing us back to reality. You are truly an inspiration.

 

Hi, my name is Natalie and I’m a writer and a mom.  When I first started writing I thought I was doing something sort of unique—raising three kids and writing a book on the side.  Then I started blogging and realized there are SO MANY mommy writers out there. All of us are trying to balance caring for our children and chasing our dreams.

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t always balance those two things well.

Three years ago I was immersed in writing and networking and trying to make this dream come true.  I was so totally focused on it that I let other things in my life slide.  And then I had a MAJOR reality check.

I was pregnant with my fourth baby and I got really sick.  Then I had my baby boy and he was terribly sick.  He spent two weeks in the NICU learning how to breathe and eat on his own.

Suddenly all of the writing and publishing stuff that I’d been stressing about for months didn’t matter at all.  The only thing I cared about was getting my baby healthy.

I gradually got back into writing as he grew and got stronger, but I tried to do it in a much more balanced way (“tried” is the operative word here, I definitely mess up some days). 

 I set aside certain hours (usually naptime) to do all of my writing and blogging. This doesn’t give me much time—usually just an hour or two a day. I write slowly and I’m not nearly as good a blogger as I was before I had my baby.  But I feel better about the way I spend my time.  My little guy is two-years-old now.  He’s more work than an incontinent puppy with a chewing problem, but everyday I remember how grateful I am to have him.

 He’s the only one of my kids who is home all day and I really want to enjoy this time. When he heads off to school I know I’ll have way more time to write, but I’ll also miss his sweet baby kisses and exclamations of “I lub you, mommy.” I constantly remind myself that publishing is not a race or a popularity contest and I need to make it work in a balanced way.

 My first book, THE SECRET UNDERGROUND came out last Friday.  It’s a very special project that me and my agent, Sara Megibow, put together as a fundraiser for a little boy named Jayden who’s been in the hospital on and off since birth.  You can learn more about the book and the project HERE.

 Every penny of the profits will go to help Jayden and his family.  You can buy a copy through any major eBook retailer.  HERE are some links.

 Thank you, Lisa and Laura for letting me visit today!

The To Do List From Hell

It's October 1st and that sound you hear is the sisters Roecker weeping.

We have 31 days to do all of the following:

1. Produce four side splittingly hilarious vlogs. We're hoping you'll be laughing with us and not at us, but at this point, beggars can't be choosers.

2. Write some amazing blog posts for the epic Lies That Bind blog tour. (Details coming soon!)

3. Pull together 28 super-secret gift boxes for giveaways.

4. Figure out how to fit 10 days worth of clothes, 3 jumbo boxes of Twizzlers and blue wigs into a carry on suitcase.

5. Convince people to come see us at tour stops.

6. Somehow mentally and physically prepare our husbands to take care of their children for 10 full days so we still have husbands (and children!) when we come home.

7. Edit an entire manuscript so that it resembles something like an amazing, thought provoking, un-put-downable young adult novel. All 73,000 words of it.

8. Whip up some amazing Halloween costumes for our kids. Or (if I'm being honest here) purchase some amazing Halloween costumes for our kids.

9. Deal with the emotional and physical grief associated with losing Gallery Girls (possibly forever). Andy Cohen, if you're out there, please, please, please film a reunion. And please, please, please sign those crazy bitches up for a second season.

10. Finally complete the 30 Day Shred, so we can squeeze into our (extremely limited) tour wardrobes.

What do you think? Time definitely isn't on our side, but crazier things have happened, right? Right. Or maybe we'll just go crazy trying to do all of this crap. Either way we'll keep you posted on our progress.