The Big Rumpus (aka Mama Lama Ding Dong) by Ayun Halliday

"The Big Rumpus is positively the best mothering memoir I've read by a straight-tawkin', breast-feeding, xenophilic, world-traveling, Indiana-reared, New York City transplant. I stayed up past my bedtime reading it, no lie. The gal can write."
—Chris Dodge, Utne Reader

From the back cover:

Meet Ayun Halliday, a new generation's urban Erma Bombeck. Creator of the underground parenting magazine The East Village Inky, Halliday's wry observations on daily life validate the complex, absurd wondrousness of being the unpaid caregiver of small children.

Reflecting on her daughter's third thumb, de-clawing the cat and debating her son's circumcision: "My family has a highly complex relationship to amputation."
On family holidays: "Danged if it isn't true -- you really cannot recreate the Christmases of your childhood. I can't even recreate the Christmases of my teens."
On lice: "Head lice were outed on the children's program Arthur this year in an effort to de-stigmatize the problem. I guess I'm glad that lice have hit the mainstream, thought what's next for Arthur and his pals? Heroin addiction?"

An uproarious celebration of the minutiae that is life with children, The Big Rumpus chronicles the stranger-than-fiction, real-life-existence of one American family.

Buy it here!

The Big Rumpus (US version): via Powells.com

Mama Lama Ding Dong (UK version): via Amazon UK

The Mama Lama Ding Dong Blog Tour!

Each day in August '06, I visited a different blog to pour some old wine into new bottles, as The Big Rumpus appeared in the UK as Mama Lama Ding Dong. If you're itching to ignore your children while simultaneously discovering some awesome parenting blogs, here's your chance! Thanks to all the participants, whose entries are permalinked below.

AUGUST 1: Mothers on the Verge

AUGUST 2: All About The Sass

AUGUST 3: Mommy Matters

AUGUST 4: So Close

AUGUST 5: Babymother

AUGUST 6:
Mommy Chronicles

AUGUST 7: Julia (Here Be Hippogriffs)

AUGUST 8: Belgian Waffle

AUGUST 9: This Woman's Work

AUGUST 10: Motherhood Uncensored

AUGUST 11: Mothershock

AUGUST 12: Baby and Mom Blog