My little salesgirl

Nora and I spent last weekend in Anaheim, attending Natural Products Expo for Mindful Mama. It was wonderful. We encountered so much enthusiasm about the project, met with really great companies, and had a whooooole lot of mama/baby bonding time. My friend Kimberly, who recently moved to San Diego, was planning to come to Anaheim for the weekend with her daughter Cecilia so they could hang out with Nora while I was at the trade show. Well, poor Cecilia got really sick the day before we arrived, so plans changed. Kimberly did come up on Friday and left Cecilia at home with grandma, but she couldn't make it on Saturday and Sunday. So Nora saddled up in the Ergo and spent two days walking the show floor with me. She even sat in on a meeting with a potential advertiser, which was pretty funny. Everyone was thoroughly charmed, and if we get the sale, her cut is going straight into her college fund.

Natural Products Expo, for those of you not in the know, is a really big trade show. Really, really big. I think there were around 60,000 attendees this year, and from all I heard business was actually quite good in spite of the economy. A lot of those attendees, it seems, had left their little ones at home, so they were literally swarming to Nora. At one point, six women literally (mostly grandmas) had us surrounded as they oohed and ahhed over the little cutie, and I had to put up a big mama-shield/force-field to protect her. No blame casting, though: I'm sure when I'm of grandmotherly age I'll be glomming onto every under-18 I can find.

Nora was such a trooper. Seriously. I turned her world completely upside-down, separated her from her beloved big brother (Daddy, too), and forced her to endure 12 hours a day of non-stop schmoozing. So at night when she refused to even entertain the idea of the motel-provided crib, of course I invited her into my bed to snuggle. Actually, it was a treat for me, too, as I really miss our cosleeping days. I don't miss the lack of sleep that comes with it, but I do miss the concentrated blasts of snuggling.


I haven't updated about Mindful Mama in quite a while, but it's going great. It's basically the entire reason (well, it and Facebook) that I haven't been blogging much lately. We're working on a major overhaul of the site (including a new domain: www.mindful-mama.com), and we'll be relaunching on Earth Day. The site will merge thought-provoking content about parenting with a social media platform for moms. Plus, it's going to be kinda gorgeous. Just you wait.