In the last week or so, my almost-5-month-old has abandoned his admirable new habit of sleeping 6+ hours at a time in favor of waking up every three hours to demand yet another feeding. It's not horribly disruptive since he essentially wakes up, rings his version of the dinner bell, powers down a bottle and falls immediately back to sleep, but my body has been experiencing something like a cringing depression at having to get back into the routine of staggering out of bed at 1 AM, 4 AM, etc.

It doesn't help matters that my husband snores peacefully throughout each awakening, then innocently asks in the morning whether or not Dylan woke up in the night. (Jeez, at least pretend like it screwed up your sleep too, you know? Otherwise I might be forced to help you SHARE in this wee-hour inconvenience, by, say, dumping a glass of cold water into your open slumbering snout.)

My gut feeling is that the baby's going through a little growth spurt and that we don't have a bigger sleep issue going on, mostly because of how he's waking up: he's not frantic or wanting comfort, he just seems hungry. I can sympathize, really -- if being a small growing baby is anything like being pregnant, I don't know how he makes it through the night without getting up and eating yet another toasted, buttered, and salted Thomas' "Everything" bagel.

(What? You didn't pork out on salt-and-butter bagels at 3 AM during YOUR pregnancies and wake up with poppy seeds stuck in your teeth? Freak.)

I'm hoping we get back to a more reasonable sleep schedule soon, because even though I suppose it's not all that tragic to have to deal with a couple quick feedings with a mostly cheery baby in the middle of the night, I'd rather up my chances of making it all the way through that dream involving George Clooney and the bathtub scene in Out of Sight, you know? (ALL THE WAY TO THE HAPPY ENDING IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN AND I THINK YOU DO.)

I don't plan to try Dylan on solid food for a few more weeks still, and I know there is supposedly no correlation between solid food and sleeping through the night. However, I'm curious as to whether or not your experience matches what the experts say. Did your baby sleep better once he/she was eating solids?

We've got a road trip planned for this weekend, a 7+ hour drive from Seattle to the southern Oregon coast to visit family. I've done this drive so many times I have the landmarks memorized: there's the right-wing billboard in rural Washington which typically marks the point when we've run through our repertoire of festive family sing-alongs, there's the rest stop where we had the World's Most Stressful Two-Kid Diaper Change, there's the quaint little coffee shop in the Willamette Valley where we can no longer stop and relax and have an adult conversation because we've got two children dear GOD TWO CHILDREN HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.

My husband likes to act like he doesn't understand why I dread these drives so much, until I cheerily announce that this time, I'd like to spend the majority of the trip in the relative comfort of the driver's chair while he sits in the cramped backseat, wedged between bags of food and diapers and toys, entertaining the baby with dangly plastic things while pointing out cows to the toddler. For SEVEN HOURS.

It seems like traveling with the kids will get easier when they're a little older, but maybe not. I cringe to think back on all the road trips my mother took me on when I was a school-age kid, where we would drive across the entire country from our home in Virginia in order to visit all sorts of amazing, beautiful places -- and how I would whine and complain and repeatedly get carsick and generally was probably such a pain in her ass I have no idea how she managed not to resist leaving me on the side of a road somewhere.

For this trip, I plan to bring our usual accoutrements: snacks, bag of distracting new toys from the dollar store, DVD player, drawing pad. You know what I'd really like, though? If I'm being totally honest? A soundproof glass divider between the front and back seat, like you see in limousines. Wouldn't that be great? When the kids start whining, you just push a button and bzzzzzzzt -- blissful silence.

Alternately, I'd like the option of FedExing my children to our destination ahead of time, so my husband and I could spend the drive BSing and taking turns napping. Oh, don't look at me like that: I'd put holes in the shipping container, I'm not a monster.

What do you guys think, is it easier to travel with older kids -- or does it just get HARDER?

Parenthood is definitely an ongoing lesson in generosity. As the parent of two small children -- one who is only 4 months old, one who will be three in August -- my days at home with them revolve entirely around their needs and their schedules. I sometimes think it's the most challenging aspect of motherhood: the fact that I often can no longer do what I want, when I want. Like when I want to lie on the couch and flip through a magazine and instead I have to "feed" and "care for" the kids, GOD.

I feel like I'm getting fairly adept at striking a good balance between my own pursuits and child-wrangling -- catching up on freelance work during naptimes, hitting the gym when Daddy can take over for a while, reading books during that one solitary minute between when my head hits the pillow at night and I fall into a slack-jawed, drooling coma -- and while I may sometimes begrudge the unexpected intrusions on such beloved activities as watching Battlestar Galactica without interruption (I tried to introduce a diaper-pooping and bottle-demanding moratorium between 9 and 10 PM on Fridays but the baby totally blew me off) I have to confess there's one particular aspect of parenthood where I have not been able to find my reserves of motherly selflessness, and that is this:

I hate sharing my meals.

There! I said it. I hate sharing my meals with my toddler. I know, could I BE more greedy and selfish and downright miserly? Next I'll be saying how I hate sharing my precious, precious oxygen, and could he breathe somewhere else, that'd be super.

Really, though, I prepare specific diet-friendly amounts of food for my meals, and when my kid gleefully ignores his delicious fattening macaroni and cheese that I would dearly LOVE to eat with my bare hands in favor of picking pieces of tofu out of my low-cal stir fry -- the very same tofu he flat-out refuses to touch if it's offered to him on his own plate -- well, what can I say, I HATE THAT. Ditto: the banana slices in my cereal, pieces of my rice cake, spoonfuls of my yogurt. I love my kid and honestly I would and do give him anything within reason but still: DUDE STOP BOGARTING MY FOOD.

Does your kid do this too? Or do you not notice, because why would you care if your sweet child wanted some of your food, it's not like you're some kind of SELFISH HAG.

This weekend we discovered that the baby is officially upright enough to ride in the backpack carrier -- huzzah! LOVE the backpack carrier! -- and we embarked on a leisurely walk around our neighborhood, glorying in the Seattle sunshine that we haven't seen for several rain-soaked weeks. Riley, our 3-year-old, galloped ahead of us shouting "FOLLOW RIWWY" and stopping to inspect and blow on any seed-headed dandelions (which he calls "candle flowers", could you just die).

When we got to a nearby small park, there was a gigantic tortoise in the grass. Really! A tortoise. Its owner, a man we've encountered before, was standing nearby as the tortoise slowly traversed a hill, smiling with what I can only describe as paternal turtle pride. He informed us the tortoise's name was Timmy, and that she was a female.

Timmy is maybe the biggest damn specimen of her kind I have ever seen. Her armored shell is wide enough for an adult to have a seat, her prehistoric legs are massive and sturdy and covered in giant scales. She cruised along the lawn, snacking on leaves, and I held Riley's hand as we approached to get a closer look.

I expected him to FREAK. OUT. I expected squeals of excitement, loud exclamations over the exotic beast, possibly even fear and cries of NO LIKE IT MOMMY. Instead, he informed Timmy's owner with a matter-of-fact-air that hey, there was a TUTTLE right there, and then he pointed out our Labrador and announced that right THERE was our DOGGIE!

And that was about it. No particular surprise whatsoever that there was an insanely huge turtle trudging along like some sort of living fossil, just . . . hey, there's a tuttle.

I sort of love this about little kids, that their worldview is so unpredictable -- where on one hand, things like tricycle-sized turtles make perfect sense, and on the other, woe to all of mankind if you serve up their milk in the GWEEN cup instead of the BYOO one.

Has your kid ever reacted to something in a way you never would have guessed, either by being under- or overwhelmed?

• Observe a speeding vehicle drive through a neighborhood without making an involuntary tut-tut-tut sound
• Walk by a young child or baby without simpering and smiling like a doofus
• Eat a meal at a leisurely pace
• Read Pet Sematary (oh my god: no. Just . . . no)
• Wear a bra with less than three hooks
• Feel politically disengaged
• Be contemptuous of the minivan
• Make it through any sick-child news story without crying
• Drink a whole cup of coffee while it's still hot
• Take a bath without at least one little plastic boat in the tub
• Sleep at night without one ear cocked like a dog
• Speak in a calm, rational voice for the entire day
• See a pregnant belly without feeling strangely giddy
• Not be wildly opinionated about the obvious superiority of Steve over Joe on Blue's Clues
• Find the idea of cleaning up after someone else's bodily substances intolerable
• Keep my car's interior clean
• Take myself even remotely seriously while dancing
• Simply accept that Elizabeth Hasslebeck and Brooke Burke have otherworldly powers that allow their bellies to return to a state of rock-hard-abdom post-baby instead of theorizing at great length about the various surgical procedures they must have endured

How about you?

Have you ever said anything about your kids that you wished you could immediately take back, because as soon as it left your mouth you realized how unintentionally disparaging it sounded? I was talking with a coworker the other day and found myself saying how much I was enjoying my toddler's age, because while babies were okay and all, it was just so much nicer to be able to have a conversation with my kid. Then I immediately flashed on the full-body happy wriggle my 4-month-old does, his open-mouthed coos and squawks, the feel of his tiny hand curling around my finger, and I felt like a TOTAL JACKHOLE. And I rushed home to inform Dylan that he is every bit as enjoyable as Riley is, and he grinned and spit up all down my dry clean-only shirt.

Obviously, I deserved that.

This is what happens when well-intentioned but ultimately uninterested people ask me about my kids: I'm never sure what to say. I start small -- "Oh, they're great, thanks for asking" -- because I know when people are just being polite and not wanting a lengthy monologue on just which milestones we've reached and what adorable thing the 3-year-old is saying. But then sometimes that's not enough, like in the case of my coworker who said, "Just 'great?'" with a smile, and well, I wasn't sure what middle ground was desired between Points A and Z on the I Am Trying Not to Bore the Crap Out of You spectrum, so my mouth started yapping and that's when I basically said my baby was no fun, or whatever.

(He IS fun! Seriously! You should meet him! Wear a raincoat!)

It's easier when I'm talking with someone who has kids of their own, because that's like a green light to blather about thrilling topics like OMG We Haven't Left Our House In Months and Hey How Do You Get Barf Out of Leather? but when it's someone who is childless I'm particularly cognizant of my potential for being that person . . . you know, the one who can't shut up about their kids. The one who can't even hold a conversation if the topic isn't parenthood.

Instead, I get awkward and try for small talk but end up saying something like oh, babies are okay. Good lord.

Do you share my dorktasticness when it comes to talking about your kids when someone asks after them, or do you not bother worrying about something as silly as whether or not they're entertained or bored by your response? (They DID ask, after all.)

When my first child was born I spent a LOT of time reading everyone's favorite make-you-crazy parenting book, What To Expect The First Year. I mean, I'd had so much fun with . . . When You're Expecting, what with the many, many potential pregnancy complications I hadn't even considered before I read about them (like when the fetus implants in your ear canal and you have to give birth out your nose, oh you hadn't heard of that one EITHER?), clearly I needed to make my way through the whole series, eventually getting to What to Expect When Your Children Have Left Home and You're Wrinkly and Decrepit But Unable to Retire Because Gas Costs Eleventy Hojillion Dollars per Gallon.

I've found that with caring for a baby the second time around I haven't had much desire to re-acquaint myself with my battered copy of What to Expect, but I did find myself idly flipping through the chapter on 4-month-olds the other day. If you've read these books, you know that each month's chapter starts with some milestones -- broken down into categories of things your baby "should" be doing, "will probably" be doing, "may possibly" be doing, and "may even be able" to be doing.

This is the crazymaking part, as far as I'm concerned, because it seems like my kids are always all over the map. Dylan isn't quite doing the baby pushup he "probably" should be doing, but he's been saying ah-goo for weeks, and that's what they describe as a vowel-consonant combination and list in the "may even be able" category. He's a genius! Wait, no, he's behind schedule! He needs physical therapy! No, he needs to join MENSA!

There's an ever-festive note at the beginning of each chapter that solemnly intones: "If your baby seems not to have reached one or more of these milestones, check with a doctor. In rare instances the delay could indicate a PROBLEM."

Oh, thanks very much, like my parental anxiety level wasn't already humming like an electrical fence over "When Baby Is Sick" (Chapter 17) and "The Baby With Problems" (Chapter 20).

Also, in nearly every month's selection of milestones, the book references a raisin. Can your baby pay attention to a raisin or very small object? Can your baby rake a raisin and pick it up in his fist? Can your baby pick up a raisin with any part of his thumb and finger? But then it goes on to remind you that for the LOVE OF GOD, whatever you do, DO NOT FEED YOUR CHILD A RAISIN. RAISINS ARE A CHOKING HAZARD.

Why compare everything to a raisin if a raisin essentially represents death? WHY?

It's not like these books don't contain useful information, but I think they should be read only in small doses to reduce the potential for Fret Overload. Although I will say that I read in this same book that it's officially "okay" if your kid eats off the floor -- because there aren't as many germs as you think and they're germs babies have been exposed to before -- so, thanks, What to Expect When Your Child Is an Uncivilized Floor-Eating Primate! I needed a free pass on that one.

There's so much work involved with caring for a very small child, but pretty much all of it boils down to Keeping the Baby Alive, Limiting the Amount They Cry, and Occasionally Removing Their Coating of Filth. I mean, sure, there are intermittent brain-benders having to do with figuring out their sleep, and finding the best ways to get calories inside their cry-holes, and deciding whether or not Baby Einstein videos promote development or beam math-destroying dullard rays directly into their fontanels -- but generally it's less about middle management strategy sessions and more about digging for patience reserves as you deal with what is essentially a tiny, adorable howler monkey.

Toddlers, on the other hand, are sort of a terrifying combination of Infant + Teenager, where one minute they're curled in your lap wanting hugs and kisses, and the next they're slamming the door to their room and blaring emo music and writing angry poetry because no one understands their needs. They require much of the work a baby does -- because they aren't quite ready to open the fridge, fix themselves a sandwich, then grab a hot shower before motoring off to preschool -- and they also require active intervention, in the form of discipline, education, and guidance.

Guidance! How scary is it that there is a human on this earth that needs my questionable life-navigation advice? Never mind the sheer horror of helping my kids make it through their school years without succumbing to the various horrors that could befall them (like drugs! Unsavory friendships! Eventual dedication to the Republican Party!), I'm freaked out that my ineptitude is going to ensure the presence of a diaper under my child's commencement robe.

See, we're in the midst of potty training in our household, and nothing has made me question my parental abilities quite like the task of teaching a child to void themselves somewhere other than their own pants. I secretly want to punch all the people who claim they trained their kid in one joyous feces-filled day, and if there was a professional potty trainer I could hire -- sort of a Cesar Milan-esque Potty Whisperer -- I would totally do so, because at least I could feel confident that someone with some EXPERIENCE was handling this project. My only skill set with regards to the potty is knowing how to use it myself.

(And, frankly, even that came into question more than once during the Great Third Trimester Chest Cold of Aught-Seven.)

Still, though, what can you do but muddle onward, making mistakes and hopefully learning from them (Handy Potty Tip! Offering M&Ms as a reward can result in a child producing exactly one molecule of pee at a time before demanding a CHOCWATE, PLEASE). This surely won't be the last time I'm faced with a parenting challenge and feeling unsure about whether or not I'm doing the right thing -- but man, I sure hope it's one of the last ones that involve poop.

Enjoying the simple things in life:
"I happy to be holding this blue cup!"

Following a thought to its logical conclusion:
"Daddy goes poop on the potty like a big boy and he get an M&M? A GWEEN one?"

Criticizing parental music abilities:
"No WHISTLING wight now. No SINGING. Hey you guys, dat's enough!"

Exploring manners:
"I want some milk, please. Please, right now. Fank you!"

Learning cause and effect:
"You going exercise, get all sweaty, needa SHOWER? Mommy's socks SMELLY?"

Torturing the household pets:
"Eeeeeeeee! It's the kitty, Mommy. Say: meow meow! I pull her tail, okay?"

Fashioning artful excuses:
"No, I can't pick up dat toy, I'm too little."

Creative descriptions:
"Dat's a TWO PUMP camel right dere."

Revealing someone's foul language habits, probably his father's:
"Mommy? I have a, um, shiddy diaper."

Working on his standup routine:
"What TIME it is? Eleben? Oh, I thought it was BOOTY TIME."

Specific mealtime requests:
"I want a peanut butter and peanut butter sandwich, Mommy. No jam! Just peanut butter. No jam wight now, okay?"

Heartbreaking cuteness:
"You have a booboo, Mommy? I kiss it, it all better."

Brain-bending annoyingness:
"Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go? Where Daddy go?"

The other day when I was at the gym I realized that the cloth I had tossed in my bag to use as a sweat-absorber was a burp rag. I mean, a clean one, but still. It was one of those hankie-sized cloths that come ten to a pack from Babies R Us, and it was festooned with cartoon whales. As it turns out, dabbing daintily at your forehead with an aquatic-themed washcloth is a fantastically efficient method of deflating any sense of bad-assedness you might have worked up during your kickboxing class.

Thanks to my own disorganization and regrettable tendency towards sloppiness, the children's accoutrements have pretty much infiltrated my entire life. The backseat of my car contains enough cracker crumbs to feed a family of ducks for a month, I've had an old baby bathtub in my trunk for weeks (Goodwill doesn't take such items, it turns out), every pocket of every pair of pants I own has at least one tissue squirreled away in its depths from the constant vigilance a toddler snout requires, and a few days ago I pulled a pen from my purse which had a Soothie pacifier firmly stuck to its nib.

The most embarrassing, though, was the time I dug out my wallet at a grocery store and accidentally yanked a Ziploc'd diaper from the bottom of my oversized purse. A wet, used diaper. Which I had sealed in a plastic bag with the intention of throwing it away as soon as I could find a garbage can, except I never did. And it had created its own . . . weather system inside the bag, coating the inside with little rainforesty moisture droplets. This repulsive item somehow hitched a ride on the corner of my wallet and made its humiliating debut right in front of an entire line of customers at the store before I managed to wrestle it back out of sight. I suppose that technically there are worse things that could have erupted from my purse, but aside from a tampon which has escaped its wrapping and comes peeping out like a tufted, dingy white cotton mouse, string dangling gaily over the side, its side stamped with the soul-shriveling text SUPER ABSORBENCY, I'm not entirely sure what they might be.

Tell me I'm not alone with the kid-stuff-everywhere issue. Okay, fine, so you don't carry used diapers in your purse (aren't YOU fancy), but surely I'm not the only one who has a baby sock in their coin pocket? That's normal, right?