Coming to a bookstore near you

Matt and I are proud to announce that Kalina's first bestseller will be hitting the shelves sometime next week. We couldn't be happier. Her book has been the product of several weeks' intense struggle and we're thrilled to see this difficult, yet exciting, period coming to an end.

At least that's what must be happening, right?

In all my Google searches the past few weeks, one of the most valuable things I've learned is that while babies are working on some sort of keen new development, their sleeping and eating habits go berserk. There's a method to the madness and certainly a madness to the method.

So Matt and I can only conclude, based on the fact that my days and nights with Kalina have been rather berserk indeed that Kalina must be either winning the Nobel prize (which we ruled out due to the timing) or writing some masterwork of fiction. We're looking forward to reading it.

After all, the only other thing the baby has seemed to be working on lately is blowing raspberries, and if all this madness is simply for a silly mouth noise I'm going to throw in the towel. She can't even do it right yet.

In case you haven't noticed, we're also increasingly confident that our child is a super-genius. We were hoping for a calm, cool B student (having been awkward A students ourselves) but instead we'll probably be sending her off to Harvard when she's 12. Poor girl.

We have our reasons. For one, she can't be bothered by simple baby toys. As if to let us know she's already advanced far beyond them, she often stares off into space no matter what cool things we surround her with. We're sure she's busy contemplating the quantum mechanics of her exersaucer or something.

She also already knows all her vowels, and has invented her own language out of them, although the words are mostly variations on "I'm bored again" "I'm hungry," "But I don't want to sleep" and "Hold me."

And then there are all her night wakings. She must be squirming in her swaddle because she can't quite reach a pen to write down her latest big idea for how to solve the global food crisis.

She's a busy baby indeed.

And while Kalina's slept decent stretches at night twice in the past week, signifying that this turmoil inside our sweet little girl's mind might be drawing to a peaceful, if temporary, close, we know we're not out of the woods yet. After all, there will be publicity tours and book signings to keep her schedule busy through the holidays.