Deborah Halverson's Blog

The best toy store on the planet is located just a stone’s throw from the U.S./Mexico border. The store is called ToyTown, and it has the most toy buses we’ve ever encountered. And that means a lot to parents whose three-year-old son introduces himself to people as “Bus Driver.” And ToyTown’s prices are C-H-E-A-P, a fact that also means a lot to parents who have three-year-old triplets.

Getting to ToyTown is easy—you just drive toward Mexico and lean left a few feet shy of the border, sending your car into Read More…

My mom was skimming her Sunday paper in Escondido today and spotted a feature about me and BIG MOUTH: “County Author Inspired by Coney Island Tradition.” What a surprise for her! I’d deliberately kept my interview with the North County Times reporter last week a secret from her and Dad, hoping that this would happen. Score!

Oddly, it’s the second such surprise my parents have had this week. On Friday, my dad was perusing The Drudge Report when the banner ad at the top of his screen flashed the BIG MOUTH book cover. He says he nearly fell out of his chair. He clicked on the banner and was sent to my BIG MOUTH website. Cheering, he jumped from his chair, raced into the backyard, and fetched my mom. But by the time they’d returned to the computer, the ad had cycled through. When he called me, I was just as surprised. So was my publicist. She wasn’t aware an ad had been placed there, would have to check with her marketing team. Not that I’m questioning it; I’m just celebrating the fun of it. To have two appearances of my new book in one week—how cool! And that they would jump out at my parents is just icing on the cake. I mean honestly, who doesn’t want to look good for Mom and Dad? I guess I’m not too far from being like my three-year-olds, who like to yell, “Hey Mommy! Watch me!” and do something they think is neat. It’s nice to know there’s still a jubilant three-year-old inside me.

“Hey, Mom and Dad! Watch me!”

How lucky am I to be living my dream? Seeing my name on an actual book in a real bookstore…I can’t imagine ever getting over that thrill. And having people actually go to a bookstore because I’ll be there with a pen in my hand . . . well, it blows my mind.

My Barnes & Noble (Mira Mesa) book signing for BIG MOUTH two weeks ago turned into one big Read More…

Back when I was in college, I suggested a walk on the beach for my third date with a cute biology major. The setting sun, the surf brushing the sand, a little hand holding, some smooching perhaps… it sounded like a lovely evening. My date had other ideas.

“See this?” He lifted a dripping blob of seaweed up to my face. Read More…

One good horror story sparks another. When my friend read my last post about how the Terrifying Three’s hit us hard and suddenly during our San Luis Obispo trip, she reminded me of an email I wrote when my boys were two years old. Her point in bringing up the tale I recounted that day was not to kick me when I’m down but to point out that everything is a phase, that it will end, that I just have to hang on through the rough spots. And breathe very deeply. Let me share that email with you. Read More…

My mom tells the story of a cross-country road trip we made when my sisters were nine, three, and one, and in which I, a precocious 6-year-old, had stretched Mom’s patience to the limit. The specifics of my behavior during that trek in our VW van are lost in the mists of time, but the centerpiece image of Mom’s story is crystal clear: Me stomping my little self-righteous self into the Redwoods at the side of the road for a potty break—sparks of indignation shooting from my body and my ponytail whipping side to side—and my mom grumbling, “I hope she gets lost.” Read More…

The Halverson’s summer tour of San Diego’s beaches moves to La Jolla. Seal Beach, to be precise. Okay, it’s actually called Casa Beach (or Children’s Pool), but I prefer Seal Beach, because that’s what it is. For some reason that can only be explained by Mother Nature, a colony of seals have staked out a sheltered stretch of beach in La Jolla and will not be moved. I love having them there. They are gorgeous and amazing and a welcome sight for curious three-year-olds. But they are also troublemakers. Read More…

The Osmonds had the Andy Williams Show. The Hansons had MTV. The Halversons have Karaoke night at Fuddruckers. Like all great musical discovery stories, my three sons weren’t aiming for the stars when they traipsed into Fuddrucker’s hamburger joint this evening. They were there for live jazz music, which is the scheduled entertainment at Fuddruckers every third Tuesday. Not this Tuesday. This night, instead of trumpets and saxophones, there was an old guy with an overbite, a Hawaiian shirt, cowboy boots, and a Karaoke machine. And two feet from him was a rotating selection of hamburger diners feeling their musical oats, happily warbling out songs like Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” and Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic ode “White Rabbit” and Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs.” My boys loved it, so we stayed. Who needs jazz when you’ve got Barry Manilow and Jefferson Airplane sharing a stage? Read More…

Three-year-olds are impressionable. That’s one of the reasons we don’t watch TV or movies in this house. Only, it turns out my boys don’t need TV or movies to pick up things—all they need is a window.

My neighbor across the street, Ramone, leaves for work when the boys eat breakfast. The boys watch him through the window as he drives off, a baseball hat on his head, while they spoon their oatmeal. Ramone wears that hat every day, and its direction each morning determines the direction of my firstborn son’s hat that day. Read More…

I’m stunningly grateful, and it’s time I said so publicly. I was just emailing a wonderful new mom, thanking her for the words of encouragement she sent my way regarding my efforts to keep all my balls in the air, and I realized that the thank you I was writing to her can—and should—be made to all the moms I’ve encountered in the three years since my triplets were born.

When my boys were still infants, it seemed like each day was twenty-four hours of constant crying (theirs and, yes, mine). In a grab at sanity, Read More…

It’s gotta be weird to pop into a bookstore during your vacation and walk smack into a table of books with grinning hot dog faces on them, and then see some lady grinning at you from between the stacks with an equally goofy grin. But 14-year-old Monica of North Carolina went with the moment last week at my first BIG MOUTH signing at Borders in Downtown San Diego,
Read More…

Most kids love shouting “Watch me!” and then doing something silly or clever or otherwise worth watching. I remember being a kid who loved shouting “Watch me!” and doing something silly or clever or otherwise worth watching.

My question is, how can kids who love shouting “Watch me!” forget so easily that someone is watching? Read More…

How long would it take your family to eat everything in your refrigerator and cupboards, at normal Daily Food Consumption Rate? The Halversons are about to find out because we’re now in the process of trying to eat everything out of our refrigerator and cupboards by the time we hand over our house key to the teacher who’ll be living here while we’re gone. Seems kind of dumb, I suppose, but I want to get down to the bare nub of everything so that the moment before we drop the key in the teacher’s palm, I can trash our refrigerator remnants. Seriously, would you want to move into a house with the previous owner’s half-used ketchup bottle in the fridge? Gross.

And so begins yet another pre-UK summer mission: By the time our plane’s wheels leave terra firma, Mother Halverson’s cupboards will be bare. Read More…

Once again, hot dogs steal the headlines of America’s newspapers–no, make that the WORLD’s newpapers: Joey Chestnut retained the Mustard Yellow Belt, eating 59 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, plus another 5 more in a sudden death tie-breaker against his nemesis, Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi. In the end, Chestnut beat Tsunami by a single dog.

Since BIG MOUTH features this event and just pubbed last month, I’d wanted to be at the contest Read More…

There’s a Mustard Rebellion in my new novel BIG MOUTH: The students of Del Heiny Junior High #13 tag their school with mustard to rebel against the school’s tomato-obsessed sponsor, Del Heiny Ketchup Company. (Hey, if your mascot were changed from the Mighty Marauders to the Proud Plum Tomatoes, you’d have angst, too. At least Del Heiny Jr 13 didn’t get the Big Burpee tomato as a mascot. Life is hard enough without being a Big Burpee.) I invented the Mustard Revolution out of thin air; it was a natural outgrowth of a scenario in which a ketchup company sponsors a school district. But in one of those fantastic “Life Is Stranger Than Fiction” moments, I’ve since learned of a real town that conducts a condiment war of its own: Buñol, Spain, host of the annual La Tomatina, a festival in which tens of thousands of people hurl tomatoes at each other in what has to be the world’s biggest food fight. Read More…