Today's Bad Mommy Moment is brought to you by PlayDate Lemonade... Gigi had a friend over this afternoon, and I offered the girls lemonade. I went to the kitchen to mix the stuff up (yes, it's powder, but it's sugar free and made with bottled water, so leave me alone) and couldn't find a suitable container designed for the purpose.
So what do I reach for, in a pinch?
Coffeemaker carafe. Krups 8-cup, to be specific. It was clean, it worked, they'll never know and I won't tell.

File Under: Things I Have Said Without Flinching Since My Daughter Turned Three:

"I'm not asking you to like it, I'm telling you to eat it."

Because my daughter really needs another football-headed ethnic role model. And I need another cheap babysitter in 25-minute installments.

Oh thank God, I actually remembered my password.
Okay, I went into hibernation for a while there. The Boy learned to walk and I've been struggling to catch my breath ever since.
I have a longer rant in mind, but I'll save it for tomorrow.
Today my son is 15 months old. His hair is the color of gold from the Crayola Big 64 Box, but when it's wet, it's the color of copper wire. He can walk and run and get up and down stairs. Anything I don't want broken, I pretty much have to nail to the ceiling. He likes cupboards, books, and his sock monkey ("Monkey Ramirez", with dreads and Red Sox ballcap, courtesy of my brother, who like me, married into Red Sox Nation). Favorite activities include pounding things, emptying shelves and cupboards, and pulling hair.
He can say "HiDooey," which we're pretty sure means, "Hi, how are you doing?" and play peekaboo.
His big sister is turning into a real little girl, with strong opinions and a gift for mimicry.
It's supposed to be Slow Season at work, but my boss has been off training for over a month now, and I'm busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest. He's back in a week. I never thought I'd be glad to see him.
Anyway, I'm back. More excuses tomorrow.

Just because I'm planning a few days off, the kids have been nurturing some really juicy coughs over the last 72 hours.

Now that we're not allowed to give little children cold medicines anymore, I suppose the most certain way to chase off their illnesses is to cancel my vacation days. Sorry kid, tough it out.

Ready Or Not: This morning, I hugged my girl and said "Happy Birthday Gigi! You're three years old today!"

She smiled and asked, "Whyyyy?"

Oh yeah. She's three all right.

I have said before that I tend to refrain from politics on the blog. This is in part due to my desire to maintain anonymity. But every now and then I come across something worth commenting on, as most of my regular readers are in the USA. So here goes:

I am one of the lucky ones. I have a white-collar job with a big employer in a reasonably modern industry. I had at least ten years under my belt when I got pregnant the first time, and I decided that I wanted a year off. It was unpaid, but I needed the sabbatical more than I needed the paycheck, at least for twelve months. I got to nurse my daughter for about a year. Closing in on three years old, she is happy and healthy and a blessing on two feet.

When I got pregnant the second time around, I knew I wouldn't be able to take off another year. I also knew that I wanted to breastfeed the second baby for as long as possible. I have enough seniority that I have my own office with a door I can close; I also have that rarest of all commodities: a supportive, family-friendly boss. I don't know how I could have coped with having two kids under the age of three if I had been told I had to pump in the bathroom (would you want to feed your kids in the WC, even if it was reasonably clean?), or if they'd said, "Hey, you want to keep nursing after your twelve weeks of unpaid leave, just stay home."

So I went back to work, closed my door twice a day when possible, and kept the Mommy Juice flowing. My son is now ten months old, happy and healthy and a blessing on four scooting little appendages. He still nurses twice a day when we can manage it, though if he keeps testing his teeth on me I might have to reconsider.

But Thank The Maker, I had the choice and I have the choice. Millions of other women are not as fortunate. This is for them. Read more about it here. Don't think of it as politics. Think of it as investing in the future.

It's official! The Boy has a new nickname: Chipper. As in, "you've kept us up howling like a lunatic for the last two hours, you refuse to accept any kind of soothing for your teething pain, and you just passed out for five minutes and woke up chattering and smiling.
"So why are you so $*&!ing Chipper?"

The day before my mother left, my son figured out how to climb the stairs. This tells me two things. First, the boy knows his audience. Second, we are sooooo screwed.

The Boy's second tooth has come in. Ow.
He spent the day at home today, having come down with a fever and the pukes last night. He's now back to normal, thank the Maker.
Tomorrow is Mom's last full day on the Island, barring freakish weather or a nervous breakdown (note that I won't say whose...) Whimper whimper whimper.

Halley Update: He is nine months old today. He crawls and can pull himself up to a standing position. This is one of his favorite pastimes. His hair is the color of Gold from the Crayola "Big Box" of 64 colors, and his eyes are like mahogany. He babbles with great enthusiasm. He has one tooth that has properly broken the surface of his lower gums, like Sgt. Snorkel.
He weighs 17 pounds and is 27 and a quarter inches long (fifth percentile and about 25th, respectively). He eats all sorts of pureed stuff and has little to no interest in Cheerios. He also likes watching Dora and Diego with his big sister - heaven help me.
Oh, and he is just about the cutest thing imaginable. I have several corroborating sources. Trust me.

Ooops, I read it again. I picked up HP7 again. I've also been plugging away at Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I started a month ago. Then two nights ago I watched The Prestige, which has insinuated itself into my dreams, mingling with Potter. I woke up the other morning thinking I had just watched the most horribly lame HP movie ever.
And my husband, bless his heart, is reading The Mists of Avalon (one of my favorite books of all time).
So all of this is to say that I am English-magicked-out at the moment.
As an antidote, I periodically pick up the Mayflower history that my brother sent me for my birthday. It's a paperback, conveniently sized for reading while nursing a wriggly baby. All the other books mentioned above are in hardcover and none is under 600 pages.
I'm also working my butt off at the office - it's high season for tourism, and the Island is abuzz with all sorts of traffic. And all my Islander colleagues ask the same question, "Why call it 'Tourist Season' if we're not allowed to shoot them?"

Still recovering from HP7, which I devoured within the first 24 hours of purchase. I pretty much read from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. straight. I am in awe of those who have the discipline to put it down between chapters.
I don't think I'm letting out any spoilers when I say that I found the outcome satisfactory. But dang, Ms. Rowling, that is one wicked gangsta body count.

Oh, by the way, "Halley" has started scoot-crawling. He can sit up unassisted too. And he giggles like the goat in the AFLAC commercials.

Waiting, waiting, waiting... Once it became clear that I would not see HP&tDH for several days, I picked up my paperback of Book One for a fix. It helps, but it also reminds me that I'm jonesing for a children's book. So to bide my time, and remind me that I'm a grownup, I've picked up the copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell my sister-in-law gave me. I am blessed with abundantly cool sisters-in-law.

Deep down I know I did the right thing, establishing domestic tranquility and all that on Friday evening. But I really really really wanted to go downtown, get that ruddy book, and Twitter or phone my peeps back home with "Chapter One..., neener neener." I would have stayed up all night reading and been a wreck the next day.

Now you know that you're getting old when staying up all night and being a useless pile of junk the next day involves reading a book rather than ingesting recreational chemicals.

Happy Birthday to Me! I took the afternoon off work yesterday to take in a matinee of the new Harry Potter movie, because I am not really almost 40, I'm two thirteen-year-olds and a twelve-year-old.
This is the theatre where we went to see "The Departed" last fall, and the film broke about ten minutes before the end. So this place is just full of bad karma, but when there are four theatres on the entire island you can't be picky.
So of course it makes perfect sense that my skiving buzz got killed when we went to pick up Gigi from school, and her teacher said, "We've been trying to call you since 3:00; she has a fever, we've sent four other kids home today with temperatures."
None of this surprises me, of course, because the last time I swore I was taking a "mental health" day off, both kids got sick. I suppose this time the only reason Halley got off lucky was that I spent the first half of the day at work.

Mixed News about The Boy The good news is that they are pretty sure it's viral, not bacterial. The bad news is that they don't want to send him home yet. One more night in the hospital, whimper. I miss my baby.
Last night I stayed up way too late, playing with the new feature you see in the upper right hand corner of my page: Twitter! Between the lack of sleep and facing another day with my baby in the hospital, I was pretty useless at the office today. I am resolved to get to bed at a decent hour tonight. Which is looking less and less likely, the more time I bugger around on Blogger, I suppose.
Yeah, the whole "thinking clearly" thing just isn't working for me. The only thing keeping me out of bed right now is the certain knowledge that I will have an even harder time getting out of bed tomorrow if I have to face a ginormous pile of dishes first thing in the morning. Ugh.
My husband is enjoying a well-earned night out, his first in weeks. His primary social outlet - a floating poker tournament - has been shut down while Powers That Be try to figure out whether it violates local gaming laws. Fortunately, he has alternatives. All work at home and no play outside the home makes Dear Husband a tad stir crazy.

Little man turned six months last week. This boggles my mind.

I am way behind on the blogging. Here's how insane I am: boy got sick over the weekend. If you've seen Intolerable Cruelty, you no doubt remember the character "Wheezy Joe" - that's what the boy sounded like. Add in feverish, inconsolable, unable to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, and you have a pretty good idea of what he was like.

The pediatrician put him in the hospital for IV antibiotics and nebulizer therapy. I am really very calm about this. Either that or I am too exhausted, after 48 nearly sleepless hours with a crying infant, to register anything other than relief.

I was packing up a little bag to go to the hospital so I could be with the boy overnight. My husband talked me out of it, assuring me that I would sleep much better at home. Still, I was this close to taking my laptop to the hospital so I could stay by my son's bedside and catch up on drafting posts. The hospital doesn't even have internet connectivity. But I could at least compose in Notepad!

No, readers, I stayed home and let the qualified professionals stay up all night worrying about him. When it comes to staying up all night worrying, I guess I just have to settle for being an ambitious amateur.

It's very late now, and I should be in bed. At least I know that when I go to work tomorrow, everyone will understand why I look like a panda bear with a meth jones.