Cover your mouth when you do that. In fact, cover everything.

Today I discovered that, like a miracle, overnight, new sensor-flush toilets were installed in my office building. I am REALLY excited about this.

I've never been a major germaphobe. I am generally of the opinion that while you shouldn't go around licking other people's keyboards, nor should you get all Howard Hughes about avoiding germs.

But with all this H1N1 craziness, only some of which I am not convinced is a government conspiracy - although why the government wants us to get the flu is not altogether clear just yet - I can't help but become a lot more diligent. After all, I have a baby at home, a baby who is in the High Risk category. I don't care if I get sick, but I cannot let her be exposed to this. So that's why not having to touch the toilet to flush it is so important to me. That and because I've never liked having to touch anything in a public restroom. A restroom with an automated door, automated stall lock, automated ass-wiper, automated flushing toilet, automated stall unlock, automated water faucet, automatic soap dispenser and automated paper towel dispenser would completely bliss me out.

Anyway my point is, I don't want to touch anything right now, because I haven't been able to get my baby vaccinated, and not touching things is the only other thing I know to do to keep her safe. Why hasn't she been vaccinated? Well, because like everybody else except people who work for big important banks whose status has, unaccountably, warranted more doses of the vaccine than hospitals, I can't find the stuff anywhere. Not that I've decided she should definitely get the vaccine, because the waters are further muddied by the controversy surrounding additives found in the H1N1 that are not in the more generally-accepted regular old flu vaccine that we all know and love. Apparently the vaccine could either completely paralyze you, or give you autism or, if you're lucky, prevent you from dying. If you listen to the dissenters, it's kind of a crap shoot which outcome you'll get. Who do you trust?

I could live with my daughter having autism; I could not live with her being dead. So I guess if someday, likely after this thing has completely run its course, someone offers me the vaccine for her I'll take it. But so far the closest we've gotten is our doctor's nurse telling us they finally received five - just five - baby vaccines and would we like one? We said yes, but then she recanted, because apparently there is a Higher High Risk category to which our daughter does not belong. I felt simultaneously as if I'd dodged a bullet and signed my daughter's death warrant.

There's a possibility that after both my fans (hi Mom) read this, you will be driven for perhaps the first time to comment on my blog because this is such a heated issue. But I beg you: please don't. If I read anymore opinions, or even, dare I say it, facts, about this situation my head will implode. Which is arguably worse than autism, but would at least negate my need for an H1N1 vaccine.

A Few Thoughts On...

Toys

At first, there was one specific place for them. A cute little basket, tucked away unobtrusively on a shelf. But slowly the toys started to migrate. A few in the bathroom for bath time. A few in the kitchen for meal time. A few in the living room so we didn't have to run up and down the stairs. A few in our bedroom - nobody seems to know how those got there.

A baby requires 24-7 entertainment. An unreasonably small portion of that entertainment is provided by sleeping. The rest is up to us. A single toy carries an interest factor of approximately 3.2 minutes. There are some toys that can be used more than once in a day, but only if it's been several hours since the first time, and you must be prepared for the fact that the interest factor for the second use is reduced to about 2 minutes. Also, there are always one or two toys that, for some inexplicable reason, cause the child to scream in terror when they are produced. (In our case, a friendly-looking stuffed ice cream cone that makes a jingling noise when you shake it.) Of course, there's no way to know which of the toys will be that kind until you've already purchased, unpackaged and thoroughly scrubbed down the toy so that it can be safely presented to the child. Accounting for these oddities, plus the few toys that are, let's face it, really more for you (the baby isn't going to be much interested in a lego Starship Fighter for quite some time, if ever), and based on 720 minutes in a day, with an average interest-level time of 3 minutes per toy, I calculate that to entertain a 10-month-old baby, you need about 275 toys. Glancing around the living room right now, that seems about right.

Fashion

Shopping for a baby is far less depressing than shopping for oneself on several levels. Even if an outfit is a size too small and covered in regurgitated peas they can still pull it off. Also, I can easily find adorable outfits for my daughter that cost ten dollars. She never complains that her ass looks too big in something - after all, it's mostly diaper, and she knows this.

There's really only one drawback to shopping for an infant: the guilt trip. It is incredibly easy to make a parent feel guilty. In fact, you don't need to try. Chances are they feel guilty already. This summer I was shopping for my daughter at Osh Kosh B'Gosh where I was delighted to have found these delicious teeny little t-shirts embroidered with flowers for only five dollars each. Score! But when the cashier was ringing me up she asked, "Do you have enough shorts to go with these?"

I would have thought zero would be enough shorts for someone who is twenty-six inches long, but apparently I am the WORLD'S WORST MOTHER because I had NO shorts. Only shirts. What did I think my daughter was - Donald Duck, going around wearing only tops and no bottoms? Who allowed me to procreate anyway? "I-I, uh, wanted to wait and see how many I, er, already have at home," I stuttered lamely. The cashier shot me a withering look that said she saw right through me and, as soon as I was out of earshot, she'd be calling social services.

But guilt trip or no, I really have no choice but to shop constantly for my daughter. She outgrows stuff so fast she's like the Incredible Hulk. I put her down for a nap in a neat little outfit only to find her an hour later half naked with the ragged tatters of her clothing hanging off her limbs. Which brings me to my next thought:

Size

My daughter is 10 months old, and fast outgrowing 18 month sizes. According to the doctor she is in the 99th percentile for height and weight. But I don't think she's the freak the sadists who draw up these charts would like me to believe. Because when I started asking around, it turned out that ALL the babies are in the 90-something percentile. Now, I'm no statistician, but isn't that, like, impossible? Seems to me we need some new charts. I'm guessing these are the charts used in 1886, when people were all generally no more than 4 feet tall and had waists 13 inches around, roughly the size of my dog's. Meanwhile the clothing manufacturers are blindly and faithfully following these charts and creating minuscule socks that wouldn't have fit my daughter when she was a four-month fetus. But that's okay; I can use them as finger warmers. She can totally pull that off.

Thank you for flying with us - we hope we never see you again!

I knew flying with an 8-month-old would be challenging. I knew it in the same vague way I knew labor would be painful.

There is very little that would have enticed my husband and me to fly with an infant across the continent, literally as far as you can go while still remaining in the domestic states, except for the phrase "free Bahamas vacation." When these words crossed my father's lips all our trepidations were immediately forgotten and I was online within minutes researching airfares. For reasons that make sense only to the airline industry, we were able to find two first-class seats for less than three coach seats. Well! That solidified it. Baby or no, there was no way we wouldn't have a fabulous flight sitting in first class!

We arrived at the airport with the entire contents of our home stuffed into about twenty pieces of luggage. The only thing left at the house were the larger pieces of furniture. Foremost in our minds as we approached security was an incident that occurred exactly a year ago, when I was six months pregnant, and we were going on our last pre-baby vacation. As we were putting on our shoes on the other side of security we watched a flustered couple as they unloaded one baby-gear item after another onto the x-ray conveyer belt, juggling a baby between them while removing their shoes, jackets, electronic items, etc. When they made it to the other side they high-fived each other. Tom and I shared a look of sheer horror. What had we gotten ourselves into?

Turns out getting through security was a breeze compared to the flight itself. A decided, in her typical baby bad-timing way, that now was an excellent time to start mimicking the art of adult conversation to which she had been paying very close attention for some weeks. A's version of conversation is to holler good-naturedly at the top of her lungs for thirty minute stretches. I think she learned this from her grandma, because I don't do that.

As we boarded the plane with far more luggage than the airlines allow (it turns out the one dubious benefit to flying with an infant is that the airline turns a blind eye to the amount of luggage you schlepp on the plane - or it could be because we were in first class. I wouldn't know because I've never flown first class before, or with a baby, so I have no control group) A decided to regale her fellow passengers with an enthralling and detailed account of what I can only assume was her first airport tram ride. She was deep into a description of the marquee with its bright shiny red lights as we sidled into our seats, balancing our gear and engaging in the kind of multi-layered levels of coordination required when doing ANYthing with a baby.

"Babe, could you hold this so I can stow the luggage?" Tom asked me, shouting to be heard over A's enthusiastic description of a woman she saw in the airport who sat in a chair with wheels on it.

"Well first I need to fix a bottle in case she starts fussing. Can you hold her while I fix the bottle and then I can hold that and then you can stow the luggage?"

"Okay but I need to set this in here so I can get the bottle stuff out so you can fix a bottle and then you can hold this while I stow the luggage and then I can take her and feed her while you get the toys and the sippie cup set up."

"Wait - the rest of the bottle stuff is in that bag over there, so you hold her while I get that bag, then I'll take her and then you fix the bottle and then I'll take her and hold that and then you can store the luggage while I -"

"I think she just pooped."

"Okay, you go change her while I fix the bottle and hold this and you can hold that while..."

Etc. You get the idea.

As soon as we sat down with sighs strong enough to blow a hole in the seats in front of us, A decided it was time for a rigorous round of calesthenics which resulted, naturally, in coffee being spilled in Tom's shoe. However after another half hour we were both covered in mixtures of spit-up, coffee, drool, pee and our own lunches, so we quickly realized caring about our appearances was a complete waste of time and energy.

A is really cute, so people tend to readily forgive her for disturbing the peace in any one of her ten favorite ways, but they are less forgiving to her parents who have absolutely no control over anything. Tom and I diligently pulled out one new toy after another, Mary Poppins style, from a small bag that you would never know could hold so much. One after another they were flung to the ground as A seemed to favor either squirming, crying or hollering over any of the toys we brought. Various points of the flight found us bent over, ass up, searching for a rejected pacifier that, A decided seconds after flinging it from her presence, was THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD AND SHE HAD TO HAVE IT BACK RIGHT NOW. We went through our entire bank of animal noises, which never ceases to enthrall A so long as you don't run out. But there are only so many animals who make noises one can mimic.

In over 12 hours of travel, there and back, neither Tom nor I were able to complete a one and a half hour movie. One of many FREE movies that first class passengers get. Nor could we use the Special First Class Lavatory, because it didn't have a pull-down changing table. Instead we had to cross the threshold denoted by the blue curtain separating the riff-raff and stand in line with the peasants to wait for their toilet. Only one of us was able to partake of the meal served (coach passengers could, as far as the airline was concerned, just starve to death) because the other had to hold the baby. And we had learned our lesson with that first coffee; no free alcoholic (or otherwise) beverages for us, unless it came with a cap. So water it was.

The seats were roomy, it's true, but not so much when you have a twenty-pound infant splayed across your lap grabbing at everything within reach. Suddenly the quarters were WAY too confined because EVERYthing was in reach. Note to Delta flight attendants: you'll need to replace all the safety cards in row 5. Somebody seems to have eaten them. And while we were permitted to board first, it took us so long to stow all our crap that we were the last to actually sit down.

Thus, my conclusions based on this experience: If you are traveling with an infant, Coach and First Class have absolutely no distinction. In fact, you might as well just reserve the seat in the lavatory and save yourself a lot of time.

Is This the Greatest Blog Ever? Is it? Is It? Oh, yes it is!

I've never been a fan of baby talk, not even to babies. When adults incorporate baby talk into their regular everyday conversation it's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Baby talk, even when directed at babies, seems to assume the listener is a complete moron. And when you hear a grown woman talking to her grown husband/boyfriend/significant other in baby talk it's just downright creepy. Like women who call their significant others "daddy" and then follow it up with a partially-gibberish request for jewelry. Gross.

(However, although I've never baby-talked to my dog, an ongoing discourse of complete nonsense is not, for some odd reason, an irregular occurrence: "Who's the best dog ever in the whole wide world? Is THEO the best dog ever? Ever in the whole world? Yes she is! Oh yes she is! I'm going to fold the laundry now! Do you want to help fold the laundry? Nooooo Theo can't fold the laundry! Theo doesn't have opposible thumbs! No she doesn't!" etc. As long as I pronounce each word maturely I for some reason consider this acceptable.)

While up until now I've managed to keep baby talk out of my speech completely, even when whispering sweet nothings to romantic interests at the peak of my teenage hormonal years, the somehow inherent necessity of repeating everything to anybody who is not an adult human being has not escaped me. Why do we do this? Is it because we feel the need to immediately fill any possible silence after a silly declaration to indicate we understand the joke is on us? Is it because we think somehow that even though the listener is certain not to understand us the first time, they will somehow gain whatever knowledge is necessary to decipher our meaning a millisecond later?

And now that I have an actual baby I do find myself doing the real baby talk thing, not just the repetition of inane but adult-word commentary - although not to an obnoxious degree (I must tell myself this, so I can live with myself). I've given myself a pass with the minor baby-talk that seems to just slip out - a phenomenon that seems to kick in whether you like it or not as a side-effect of giving birth - but only, obviously, when directed at my baby. Therefore you can imagine my shame and embarrassment when I asked a coworker the other day if her lunch was "lummers in her tummers."

Even I don't know what this means, although like Jabberwocky the context does at least provide a fairly reliable definition to infer. My coworker either didn't notice or has a brilliant baby-talk filter mechanism because she didn't react at all, just answered the nonsense question as if it were perfectly ordinary. But this did not alleviate my mortification. What if I've completely lost all baby-talk self control? What if she reacted so smoothly because I do this ALL THE TIME and don't even realize it?!

For those of you who do not have or interact with kids and, therefore, have no reason to know this, babies have a tough time with pronouns so it is recommended you refer to her and yourself in the third person or by name. But Tom and I now refer to ourselves completely in the third person at home, even when not addressing the baby. "Mamma's going night-night" has replaced "I'm going to bed." We do it when the entire rest of the sentence is completely inappropriate for a baby's ears: "Daddy is so FUCKing exhausted." We may say "fuck" around our kid but at least we remembered to refer to ourselves in the third person.

I think the barriers between home and work are slowly erroding, as evidenced by the lummers question. Now I'm living in a constant state of paranoia. What if in my next staff meeting I burst forth with, "Who wants to hear Mamma's reporty-worty? Who wants to hear? Who wants to hear Mamma's reporty-worty-torty-lorty?" I really feel sometimes like this might not be too far off.

Is Mamma going a little nutsy-wutsy? Is she? Is she? Is Mamma going to have to go away to the hospital wospital? Oh, yes she is! Oh yes she is!

Summer Lovin'

So Tom, Annora and I were hanging out in our sub-basement bedroom in our underwear, with three fans pointed at us, wondering how we were going to get through this summer's heat. Because not only do Tom and I have to worry about my very vocal discomfort but for the first time we now have another person in the family who is - and who ever imagined this were possible - more vocal about her displeasure than I am.

"It's hot," I whined.

"Aheh-aheh," A agreed, which is baby-speak for "I am upset about something. I do not have the vocabulary to say what, exactly. But you have 30 seconds to figure it out before I reach Full Baby Meltdown and I don't think I need to remind you what happened last time."

"We should get a baby pool," I suggested. "That would keep her cool, and she loves the water. We'll just get one of those small ones, fill it up and plop her in. She'll love it!"

"AHEH-AHEH," insisted A.

The next day we were out bright and early shopping for a baby pool. It turns out inflatable pools are quite cheap so we decided, why should A have all the fun? We should get one big enough for the whole family! We (as in, Tom) even had the presence of mind to measure the one flat space in our backyard to make sure the biggest one within our budget would fit.

We dragged our purchase home and ripped open the box. It was a matter of hours before the heat of the day would be on us and the aheh-aheh warning siren would begin. While A had her lunch and nap, Tom would inflate and fill up the pool and joila! Instant happy family splashy time.

But after about an hour of playing with A, and rapidly running out of amusing tricks, I wandered into the backyard to see what the hold-up was. The pool lay limply on the deck where we'd left it; Tom was in the yard sweating profusely over a plastic bag.

"What are you DOING?" I asked impatiently.

"We can't put the pool on top of dog poop," he pointed out. Well, I couldn't argue with that; nor was I about to volunteer to help. So A and I skeedaddled back into the house.

A was in the middle of a tasty lunch of squash and peas (her favorite - don't ask me where she got that) when Tom came inside, soaked with sweat, and announced, "Blowing this thing up is going to take a year and a half. I'm going to the store to buy a pump."

I suppressed my sigh, glancing at the clock, but figured there was still time to get the pool inflated and filled before A woke up from her after-lunch nap.

While she snoozed I headed outside once again to check Tom's progress. The pool was still limp, and Tom, barely recognizable he was so covered in sweat and grime, was futily pumping away with a hand pump. "I've shortened the amount of time to maybe 6 months," he said grimly.

"Don't we have an electric pump?" I asked. It seemed to me that at some point in our past Tom declared the necessity of an electric pump for reasons I no longer remember and didn't bother to argue at the time.

Tom looked vague, then sheepish. "Oh yeah." He went down to the garage and brought the pump up, and I went back into the house to attend to A who had awakened from her nap and was in a very sociable mood.

After I'd gotten A changed and we'd played a rousing game of peek-a-boo we once more went to check on the progress of the pool, only to discover - guess - that it still lay limp on the deck exactly where we'd dropped it that morning.

"I forgot this pump only works by plugging it into the car," Tom said.

"So why don't you bring it down to the street and inflate it there?"

Tom looked a bit dubious but also recognized no real alternative other than going to the store and buying yet another pump. So he hefted the heavy hunk of plastic over one shoulder and tottered down the steep driveway to the car, where he laid the pool out on the grass and hooked up the pump. After watching this ordeal and subsequently hearing the satisfying hum of the pump's motor, insuring that soon, soon, we would be sitting in a cool pool of water, I headed back inside once more to dig deep into my creative soul for more ways to entertain a six-month-old.

After another hour or so, A decided, for lack of anything better to do, to take another nap. I put her down and glanced out the window to see how far along Tom had gotten with the electric pump. The pool was still completely limp. I watched him fiddle around, turn the pump off and on and off and on, and crouch beside the pool rubbing his face in consternation. Then a lightbulb must've gone off in his head because he suddenly lept up, did something in the car, came back out, and started up the pump again. This time I could see a barely perceptible ripple run through the length of the pool. At last! When A woke up she would get to experience her very first pool!

A had been up for another two hours by the time the pool was done inflating. She had run through absolutely every single toy and activity we had in the house and was clearly expecting an afternoon soujorn, as we did most afternoons to alleviate her predictable late-day boredom. But we couldn't go anywhere with the pool ALMOST ready, and in any case we were fast approaching dinner time. While there was certainly plenty of time to have a nice splash in the pool, we'd be pushing it if we tried to go out anywhere, and we learned the hard way one day when we delayed at a friend's party for an hour that you do NOT mess with the nighttime schedule. On penalty of insanity. But after another few minutes had gone by, still with no pool present in the backyard, I once again stuck my head out the front window to witness Tom attempting to maneuver the not-heavy but incredibly unwieldy pool - which was significantly larger than I envisioned it would be - up the front steps and into the house. I plopped A in her bouncer and ran out to help him.

"We may have been a bit overly ambitious," Tom admitted.

"We can do it," I said. "We'll just get it up the stairs and heave it over the couch and around the dining table and out the patio door just as soon as I move all the patio furniture over to the side."

So that is what we did, and finally the pool was inflated AND in the backyard. Now all we had to do was fill it and instant family play time!

"It's getting dark," I observed. The previously sunny patch of lawn which was the one place the pool would fit was now in shadow. "Do you think it'll be too cold?" When the sun goes down in Seattle, the temperature plummets pretty quickly.

"Oh, it'll be fine," Tom said with a certainty that I had learned over the years not to argue with. "I'm not worried about that." Which begged the question - what WAS he worried about? But I decided to leave it alone, particurlarly since A was starting to wonder aloud if, after fifteen minutes, she had been left completely alone on the planet. We played roller coaster baby for awhile, a game that would have made me, personally, sick to my stomach but which caused A to shriek with delight. When I started to feel light-headed and as if my arms were going to fall off, I brought A outside once again to check on this fabulous pool I had been promising her all day. And lo! There was water in it! In the inflated pool, in our backyard, there was water!

Tom grinned with pride, his dirty, sweat-soaked t-shirt sticking to him, and gestured at the pool he had assembled for his little family. "Go ahead and try it out! No need to wait till it's completely full!"

"Okay!" I cried excitedly and whirled back into the house to get our bathing suits. I debated for a brief moment just leaving A in her diaper. What does one do in this situation for a person who still pees in her pants? If I leave the diaper on her, it will soak up half the pool water and I won't be able to lift her out. But if I take the diaper off, the carefree feeling of a breeze on her tushy will inevitably cause her to add a little of her own warm water to the pool's. I decided a little pee was no big deal - it's sterile after all - and a loaded-down diaper full of pool water was less desirable. So, dressed in our bathing suits (A's too big, mine too small) we gleefully headed out to our pool.

"Look sweetheart, it's like a big bath!" I told my daughter, who squinted at it and looked unimpressed. Nevermind, I'd show her soon! She was going to love it! I clambered over the side of the pool with one leg and gasped. "Holy shit, it's FREEZING."

Tom rolled his eyes. "Well give it a second, you have to get used to it."

"No, Tom, it's FREEZING. Check if you don't believe me."

He stuck a hand in. "It's freezing," he said flatly.

We looked at each other in the waning light and Tom pursed his lips with determination. "We've gotten this far," he grumbled and marched into the house. I watched as he filled bucket after bucket with hot water from the sink and dumped it into the pool. After about six trips he said, "Okay, that's enough. This is getting ridiculous." I couldn't have agreed more. But at that moment A considered the delay an excellent opportunity to have a nice long pee, and it was currently running down my arms and legs, her bathing suit providing no road block whatsoever.

After I got us both cleaned up and decided to resort to the diaper-full-of-pool method we trudged downstairs into the twilit evening and I once again dunked in a toe. "It's freezing," I muttered glumly. "I'm done. No pool. It's A's dinner time anyway."

Tom looked crestfallen. "But what do I do now? If I leave the pool out it'll get full of bugs. I am NOT going to empty it and go through this again tomorrow."

I just stared at him, too weary to offer suggestions.

Tom heaved a sigh. "I'll go to the store and get a tarp to cover it," he said, and off he went again looking like a homeless person in his crusty, dirty shorts and t-shirt. Or like a dad who is trying to give his kid a fun time in the yard. It's a fine line.

A was finished with her dinner and we were moving on to bath time - the regular kind, in the tub, which she frankly never found anything wrong with in the first place - when we went once more to check on Tom. What we saw was the inflated pool sitting on top of a tarp, covered with another too-small tarp, and held together with a complicated series of bungee cords which Tom keeps in his car for things like this and securing Christmas trees to the roof once a year. Our yard was gone and had been replaced with a webbing of bungee cords which the dog would have to somehow maneuver through and around in order to relieve herself.

Tom looked up at me from his crouched position, looking like a very tired, very disheveled, and very dispirited spider in the middle of a web, and said without emotion, "I got the wrong size."

At that point I think you'll agree there was nothing to do but burst into hysterical laughter, so that's what we did, until Annora gently reminded us that it was getting very close to bedtime, and woe to the parent who did not heed the warning:

"Aheh-aheh."

I Saw the Sign

First, allow me to apologize to all of my fans out there (both of you - hi, mom) for the huge gap in between blogs. You see, my brain has turned to mush, and I forgot how to type, formulate sentences, create original ideas, and everything else not associated with poop or drool. Frankly I'm still operating with less than half a deck and on hardly any sleep, and I have the attention span of a thirteen-year-old. All this does not bode well for a blog that makes sense, much less is entertaining. So you should probably just stop reading now.

Still here? Aw, thanks Mom. Okay, today's topic is: useless signs. The idea came to me when I was in the restroom today at work, washing my hands. Because this is something one does after one has gone potty. This is what I was brought up to believe, and I certainly intend to bring my daughter up in the same manner. In fact, I am SO adamant about this particular habit that not only do I wash my hands after *I* go to the bathroom, but also after my daughter does. Because so far I'm the one who handles THAT matter as well. She keeps her hands clean; or, when they are not clean, she thoroughly cleanses them by emitting a bucket of drool which ends up being far more thorough than my own method involving soap based on sheer quantity of the water flow. Anyway, in the restroom at work is a sign that says "Wash hands before leaving this room."

What a completely useless directive. Those of us who were not raised in a cave (and maybe even those of us who were) know to wash our hands without needing a reminder. Those of us who - and there is one in every office, if not several, and you know who you are and should be ashamed of yourself - do not make this an automatic practice are certainly not going to be reformed by a cryptic sign. I'm not sure what, exactly, it would take to convince someone who has just handled their own excrement that it's a good idea to clean their hands afterwards if this thought does not occur to them on their own.

This led me to continue to contemplate useless signs, as to do so is less strenuous on my mushy brain than to try to engage in work. Work, after maternity leave, is something one has to ease into, like a frigid swimming pool at the very beginning of summer. I read the New York Times and deleted all the email in my inbox, and I think that, after having done NOTHING for the past 20 weeks except make silly faces, I have the right to call it a day and fuck off until five pm.

"Avoid alcohol during pregnancy." This is one of my favorites. First of all, the choice of the word "avoid." As if one might be ambling down the sidewalk and, due to a pregnant woman's natural lack of balance, accidentally fall right into a pitcher of beer. If only she had been more careful to avoid it! Secondly, in order to read this sign and have it apply, one must already be a pregnant woman in a bar. Chances are solid decision making isn't what led you to this circumstance in the first place and, again, a sign certainly isn't going to convince you otherwise.

I don't know if my absolute favorite sign of all time is still on the side of the highway leading to the Phoenix airport, but every time we read, "Caution, low flying aircraft," everybody in my family would yell gleefully, "DUCK!" How, exactly, is this sign supposed to be of assistance? If an aircraft is flying low enough for you to be concerned about it, that's pretty much it for you.

Of course, "Baby on Board" has been done to death, the typical sarcastic comment being "Well, I WAS going to hit your car, but since there's a BABY on board I'll let you go on your way."

I'm sure there are lots more, but frankly I've lost interest.

Strangers in a Strange Land

In the process of taking care of our 7 week old daughter, I see my husband for a total of about 10 minutes a day. Our encounters are limited exclusively to blearily handing over the baby for the next shift, and reporting any new helpful techniques we've discovered that may or may not have coincidentally calmed or entertained her.

At 12:15am: "She's just been changed, and I discovered if you rock her gently from side to side while at the same time jiggling on the balls of your feet, she'll go to sleep."

At 2:22am: "Here, you're turn. She likes it if you hold her tightly with her stomach turned towards you while bouncing up and down on one leg and holding the pacifier in her mouth."

At 3:58am: "Take her. I haven't eaten in three days. Oh but I found out that the best way to get her to burp is if you get in a crouching position, hold her arms over her head and roll her from side to side while humming."

"Wait - humming what?"

"Steve Martin's The Thermos Song or Carly Simon's version of Itsy Bitsy Spider but NOT Cat Stevens or she'll scream."

At 5:03am: "I tried what you said, hopping up and down on my left leg and chanting "rigatoni, rigatoni" but she wouldn't go to sleep."

"Did you spin around clockwise three times first?"

"Oh, CLOCKWISE? I thought you said counter-clockwise. No wonder she was so upset."

The books don't help at all. They make suggestions for soothing what must be NORMAL babies, but not OUR baby, because none of the suggestions ever work or even make sense. "Establish a bedtime routine to teach Baby when it is time to go to sleep, and the difference between night and day." Well, her bedtime is 7pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm, 9:45pm, 11pm, etc. So when, exactly, should this routine be performed? "Sleep when the baby sleeps." Yeah right. That sounds terrific in theory and yet is impossible to do. After spending two hours trying to get her to sleep, she finally conks out, at which point you run around like a maniac trying to get all the piled-up chores done so that you can lie down too. As soon as you lie down, a little light goes off in her baby brain and she starts wailing.

I know my husband is the other person in the house who is an adult and wears a bathrobe, but that's the extent of our relationship now - vague recognition in the hallway as we pass the baby back and forth along with our newfound theories, each one more ridiculous-seeming than the last.

Meanwhile our daughter also seems to have no idea who WE are. While she eats she gazes up at me with wide eyes that seem to say, "I appreciate the milk. Do I know you?"

"I'm your Mommy," I remind her with false cheer as I struggle to keep my own eyes open.

"Hm, no, sorry, not ringing any bells," her eyes say. "Where would I know you from?"

"Um, the womb?"

Her gaze doesn't waver but appears apologetic. "Nope, sorry. Maybe you have me confused with another baby? You do seem nice, though."

And just when it seems hopeless - I will never again curl up with my husband on the couch to watch inane TV, my daughter will never catch on that I am the same person who fed her two hours ago not to mention gave her life - she'll throw us a bone in the form of a tiny smile that may or possibly may not have been gas-related. But it's enough to keep us going for a little longer.

And we three strangers struggle on towards the very distant hope of a full night's sleep.

So... What Happened?

I am too tired to be clever, or to try to be clever, so mainly I am writing to announce the birth of our beautiful daughter so that you can all stop worrying about me. I'm sure your concern for my labor probably dampened your holidays this year more than the depressed economy. So now you can ring in the New Year assured that I survived the ordeal, as did our daughter, although we were both a bit battle-weary from the experience.

Want the whole bloody story? Well, sorry. I vowed I would not be one of those women who tortured people with gory tales of her labor unless specifically asked. I will just say this: labor kind of sucks. I told Tom that our daughter could forget having a sibling. We'll just get her a dog. I can't imagine why anybody would go through that more than once. My friend and mother of two says just wait a bit - I'll get "Momnesia" and want to do it again. I say whoever claims you "forget" the pain was probably high on cocaine and never felt any.

But enough about that. What I meant to tell you is that I have not had time to fill you in on the joyous arrival of our offspring because our household revolves around two things: the baby and sleep, in that order. Any downtime - and there really isn't any downtime, more on that later - is spent in tense anticipation of when she will make her next demand. When we hear her little "a-heh, a-heh," warning cough we react as if to a five-alarm fire.

"YOU - get the pacifier!" Tom shouts to my mother, adding hand gestures to aid in the rapid direction of household traffic. "YOU - clean diaper! I'll get the burp cloth. MOVE PEOPLE, MOVE! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"

We all leap up and crash into each other in our haste to accomplish our assigned tasks, for we know that we have approximately 12 seconds from "a-heh, a-heh" to full-fledged, ear-piercing, gutt-wrenching, soul-crushing wails. It is our top priority to prevent full baby-cry escalation from occurring.

When we are not catering to this 8-pound person's needs which, despite being as basic as they can possibly be, somehow still manage to consume an entire day, we are trying to get some sleep. Here is a conundrum: if the baby sleeps an average of 16 hours a day, how is it I am lucky to get four? That defies all logic. And yet even the dog isn't getting enough sleep, and she is a real pro at sleeping through anything. So what am I doing during all those hours? I'm not cleaning, that's for sure. Our house looks like it's occupied by ten college freshmen boys. I'm not completing - or even starting - her birth announcements. I'm not working. I'm not shopping. I'm rarely bathing, and certainly not doing my hair. Where does the time go?

I think I can account for about ten hours spent just staring at her. She's fascinating. Just like a real person, only tiny. The rest of the time is spent doing laundry. The baby owns approximately ten outfits that fit. I own about five pairs of pajamas. That means that I am doing laundry roughly twelve times a day.

So here I sit, surrounded by filth, in pajamas stained with breast milk (pre- and post-consumed), twigs sticking out of the snarls in my hair, purple bags under my eyes, next to this clean, fed, gorgeous little baby who will one day be embarrassed to be seen with me. I can't imagine why.