Penn's message in Obama's book + mush

Guardian News & Media is publishing a 140 page book of the "messages to Obama." Penn's message made the cut. Profits will be donated to the Guardian Katine project. The book will be available in December 2008.

This will be the second time Penn is published. The first was when he and I did the Global Night Commute for Invisible Children.

As a side note, we're thinking of giving him his own video podcast.

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Another side note, my baby is growing up. Part of me can't wait. I want age to bless me with the ability to use more logic and reason and less yelling down the hallway to hurry up and spillage and "sit still" and "be quiet" and negotiating the rate of Halloween candy consumption. Part of me is ready for soccer teams and broken teenage hearts and college diplomas and grandchildren.

But the majority of me, the part that cuddled with him in bed tonight and buried my nose in his freshly sheared head of Suave Orange Mango Outburst shampoo and told him all the fun things we would do this weekend, kissed his soft face all over, curled him up in a kitten-like ball and wrapped myself around him, the part that has no idea how to have a career and a kid and do well at both and regrets each night how many times I opted for, "Mommy has to work---" instead of Hotwheels, that part wants him four years old and forever. That part makes me feel whole and important and happy and right.

I am with Penn 24 hours a day. And at the end of it, I often miss him. The things that annoy me about toddlers only annoy me because I'm so busy trying to do something else, for someone else. I don't have time to make Christmas cards or birthday cards for my family because I'm so busy doing that for everyone else. Not that I don't absolutely love my job and not that I don't have fantastic clients and not that I know if I'd even make any of you a card if I did have time. . . but trying to do everything at once makes me feel scattered and hurried and incomplete.

So, where is the balance, or is there one, or is there even supposed to be one?