The other day when I was driving home from the WalMart with all three kids, I happened to glance into the car that was stopped next to us at a light. Inside the car was a young family. The baby in the backseat — totally adorable, by the way — was really young, no more than two or three weeks old.

And that baby, cute as he was, was WAILING.

The mommy was behind the wheel and was gesturing wildly and desperately at her husband in the passenger seat. He was digging frantically through the diaper bag, throwing out stuff left and right, no doubt looking for a pacifier or possibly a small toy.

They were pretty freaked out.

I totally remember those days. I smiled, because they’re behind me now. Don’t worry, freaked-out mom and dad — you’ll figure it all out, in time. Your baby may be pissed right this second but he is actually a-okay, and will be just fine. In fact, everything is going to be just fine.

I must admit that as Little Miss Sunshine approaches her first birthday, I am getting a little wistful for the babies, although incidents like this make me realise all over again that I am oh-so-happy to be all finished. Still, I have a small amount of sadness that we are saying goodbye to the baby phase of our lives, and moving on to new things.

Lately it seems like everyone we know is having a third baby. Ten years or so ago, everyone had exactly two kids — no more, no less — or so it seemed to me. Now it seems like at least half of the kids in Gal Smiley’s preschool class are, or soon will be, one of three. It’s so common now, actually, that we’ve been asked many times if we are going to have a fourth. I guess “four” is the new “three.”

When we’re asked if we’re having a fourth, I do pause. But I know we’re at the max now. All the bedrooms are full, so we’re done.

Time for new and exciting things.

As part of my ongoing quest to record incidents in which I am Very Lucky in this blog, I have to mention our visit to the WalMart last week.

All three of our kids have a Special Friend, one particular stuffed animal that they sleep with. Little Miss Sunshine has Hero, a brown bear that we purchased before she was born. I shopped for ages for Hero, looking for just the right thing to be her little sleep buddy. Hero was close to what I was looking for, not exactly perfect but close enough, and I was freaking about this one stupid thing, so we bought Hero.

Then, just before the Little Miss was born, I was wandering in the toy aisle at the Superstore and I saw Pinkydoo. A little pink bear. I knew immediately that I HAD to have her. She was so perfect. So she came home with me too.

Hero is the sleep buddy because we bought two of him, in order to have a backup, just in case, but it’s been clear for the past few months that Little Miss Sunshine loves Pinkydoo just as much, if not more. When she’s sleeping she has to have Hero in her hand, but when she wakes up, she looks for Pinkydoo right away. Pinkydoo can always calm her down when she’s sad; Pinkydoo can keep her occupied for an hour at a time in her playpen. Pinkydoo is her best friend.

When we went to the WalMart, the Little Miss had Pinkydoo in her hand and didn’t want to leave her behind, so I stupidly let the bear come along for the ride.

Then I even more stupidly let her bring Pinkydoo in the stroller, to cuddle with as I shopped. With all three kids. For a BATHING SUIT. It was a little stressful. I forgot about the bear.

By the time we got back to the van and I was loading everyone into car seats, it hit me. Pinkydoo was gone. My daughter’s favourite plaything, her BEST BUDDY, gone! Possibly lost forever!

This is the kind of thing that really pushes me over the edge into Hysterical Mommy territory.

So I told the older two kids what the problem was, and they swung into action like a little A-team (I call Hannibal!). They jumped out of the van and I grabbed the stroller and we all ran back to the store at top speed. Gal Smiley called out, “Pinkydoo! Here Pinkydoo!” along the way like she expected the pink bear to come running right over. The Captain made a scanning scope for his eyes with his hands and bleep-blooped back and forth, checking every corner.

We retraced our steps and shortly after running inside I stopped an employee who had helped us before. I told him we’d lost a little pink bear and what should we do?

Then, a man standing not two feet away said, “Oh, it’s your bear! My son found it.” So he turns to his 10-year-old (or so) boy, and says, “Where’s that pink bear you found?” And the boy says, “I know exactly!” and he leads us directly to where Pinkydoo is sitting on a bank machine at the other end of the store.

I almost cried with relief.

I am One. Lucky. Mommy.

Pinkydoo is staying home from now on.

We went to see Wanted in the theatre last night. Years of watching nothing but Treehouse and reality television left me pretty shocked at all the graphic violence. About five minutes into the movie, there’s a scene in which multiple people are killed with shots to the head, and I leaned over to Sir Monkeypants and said, “Man, this is really different than Toopy and Binoo.”

We were able to see the movie in theatres because we actually hired a babysitter. This is so embarrassing and sad, but this is the first time we’ve ever hired a babysitter since the Captain was born. In the past five years, Sir Monkeypants and I have been out together no more than a handful of times; we’ve only ever gone out together when my sister FameThrowa was available for sitting. Oh, and twice we’ve done an anniversary babysitting swap with the Carl Sagans, whose anniversary is the day after ours.

In fact, let us tally:

Number of nights I have slept away from the kids (with Sir Monkeypants back at home): 1

Number of nights Captain Jelly Belly has slept away from me (camping with Sir Monkeypants): 2

Number of nights Gal Smiley has slept away from me (camping, as well): 1

Number of nights Little Miss Sunshine has slept away from me: 0

Number of times Sir Monkeypants and I have been out together, with FameThrowa babysitting: 5

Number of times Sir Monkeypants and I have been out together, with Mr. Carl Sagan babysitting: 2

Number of times my friend Fiona and I tried to do a babysitting swap and she came and sat for us while we went to a wedding reception, but we never got around to sitting for her, which I’ve always felt bad about: 1

To sum up: I can count on two hands the number of times we have been out of the house together since the Captain was born. I can count on one hand then number of times I’ve slept apart from my babies. No wonder I wasn’t invited to be one of the parents on Baby Borrowers.

So needless to say, hiring a babysitter for a night on the town was a pretty big deal for us.

Our new babysitter is Miss Hilarious, daughter of MyFriendJen. Our kids know her and love her; she has little brothers and sisters that she takes care of all the time; and her own parents are just five doors down should anything go wrong. Plus, she has at least four more good years of babysitting ahead of her, and she has a circle of three other very nice girlfriends, all of whom babysit, so if you can’t get one particular sitter for one particular night, you can probably get one of the others. She’s pretty much the ideal in terms of babysitting.

Still, it took us a looooong while to work up to this. We’ve talked about hiring her for at least six months now, but every time it came right down to it, I just couldn’t go through with it. It’s been easy to use Little Miss Sunshine as an excuse — what if she needed nursing in the night? — but really, she hardly ever nurses at night anymore, and the time had come for us to ease back into being actual adults for a while.

Last night before Miss Hilarious arrived I was kind of freaking out. Not about leaving the kids (too much, anyway)…but about other stuff. Like, what kind of snacks should we leave out? Would we have enough quality TV shows on the PVR and movies available on DVD? What phone numbers should we be leaving? Should I type up an information sheet on each kid? Should I leave detailed instructions on paper?

I also felt a strong need to clean the whole house, which seems really silly. It’s not as if Miss Hilarious was going to go over our house with a white glove and then refuse to come back if she found dust. Still, it felt more to me like we were having guests over, than hiring a babysitter. Weird.

Oh and one more thing? Miss Hilarious asked us for a fire plan. We do not have one. We suck, just a little bit there.

Anyway, everything worked out in the end. Once I settled down and Miss Hilarious took over, everything felt great. We’d already put Little Miss Sunshine to bed and the older two kids were already in their jammies, so Miss Hilarious just had to get them into bed — we hear that they went easily with no trouble. They were more than happy to see us leave — they love playing with Miss Hilarious and there were no tears or tension — so we skipped happily out the door and didn’t look back.

Although I sat with my cell phone in my hand throughout the whole movie, I was able to actually enjoy the movie and relax. I was surprised and comforted by the fact that I totally trust Miss Hilarious with our kids. I only hope the quality of the snacks was good enough that she’ll want to come back again.

Many, many more times. Oh, the freedom!

I feel really embarrassed to admit this, but I hardly ever take the kids to the library. It’s because I find library visits to be incredibly tense.

I know, it’s a quiet, peaceful place, right? Shouldn’t be stressful, right?

The problem is that my kids, who are normally so sweet and well behaved, have no sense of library etiquette. They get overwhelmed with excitement at seeing so many books at eye level and they can’t control themselves. They start pulling books off the shelves with both hands and the next thing I know, I’m sitting in a chair that supports perhaps one third of my rear end, surrounded by a pile of a hundred books, which is growing every second. And half of them are French, so I can’t read them anyway. I start freaking out about the huge mess that they are making, and I start hissing at them to Cut. It. Out.

Plus they are completely unable to keep their voices down, and that makes me super tense too. They just can’t seem to understand that the library is not a place for yelling, or running, or squealing, or making funny voices. It’s NOT GOOD.

PLUS, I’m usually interested in browsing for a few key titles myself, and I always get sucked into the bad, bad idea of trying to look at the shelves with one eye, while using the other eye to try to watch three other kids. All the stuff that I’m actually interested in checking out is usually already gone, though, so I get upset that there’s never anything good at the library.

Eventually I’m angry and trying to look for books while hissing at the kids to BE QUIET and removing a book from the baby’s mouth while simultaneously trying to reshelve the hundreds of titles the kids have already pulled from the stacks.

In short, it is not exactly a recipe for fun.

I know this is a chicken-and-egg situation — if I never take the kids to the library, they’ll never learn how to act properly there, but I never take them because they don’t act properly there. Alas.

It doesn’t help that I find visiting the Indigo to be a pure delight. The kids are free to talk loudly because no one is trying to study or work. They can run around in the open aisles of the kids section. I’m not usually interested in buying anything, so instead of trying to do my own shopping or browsing, I’m content to just sit at a table and read the books that the kids select and bring to me. I don’t worry as much about the mess because it’s a store, and having items for sale out on display is almost as good as having them on the shelf.

There’s mirrors and toys to keep the baby interested. The Captain usually makes a stop at the train table for old time’s sake. Gal Smiley loves to play with the puppets they have there and to try on the costumes they sell. They even have Dora computer games.

It’s not just a store…it’s a destination.

PLUS, there’s nothing I like to buy more than paper products, books in particular. So when we discover a title we really, really love…I can bring it home with us. And if there’s a specific title I wanted to read…they usually have it. Multiple copies of it. Available for reading or for taking home, if we want.

I feel like something is wrong with the fact that I prefer to visit a store than a library. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you? Shouldn’t I be teaching my kids something better, something about the horrors of big business and the subtle corruption of marketing and the good of publicly available knowledge?

I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it all out. In the meantime, the Indigo beckons.

Last night Sir Monkeypants was watching this new reality show called The Baby Borrowers, while I enriched my mind by reading a book on the couch and only occasionally glancing at the TV. To be polite. Because I have my standards, and while American Gladiators may make the cut I do have to draw the line somewhere.

(Of course, I will totally be watching Baby Borrowers next week. Sigh.)

Anyway, it’s a show about five teenaged couples who “borrow” a baby for three days. Most of the girls are in it because they think they are ready to have kids and want to see what it is like. Most of the boys are in it because they think this little experiment will demonstrate to their girlfriends that they are NOT, in fact, at all ready.

I think this show is aimed at kids, to show them that they probably shouldn’t be procreating just yet, and also at parents, who can look back and laugh at those tough first few days with a baby when you had no idea what you were doing.

But I have to say, all Sir Monkeypants and I wondered about is…what kind of parents could give up their baby to strangers for THREE DAYS?

We just couldn’t get over it. When the parents showed up to hand over their babies — ranging in age from about 7 months to 11 months — they seemed normal. They seemed like good moms and dads. But I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would be willing to let unknown teens take care of my baby for three whole days. There’s nothing they could offer me, NOTHING.

The show tries to make it easier for the parents by having a full-time nanny in the house, monitoring the situation, able to intervene should anything life-threatening come up. The parents themselves are able to watch their babies at all times via video surveillance, and if the parents feel like they need to get in there, they can walk over and speak to the teens and/or comfort their babies as needed.

They didn’t specifically say this but I assume that they are also getting some sort of financial incentives. I imagine the show is going to pay for all of those babies to go to college, or maybe for a lifetime’s worth of health insurance.

BUT STILL.

When those five families marched over with their babies and handed them over, and then walked away with empty strollers and slings…I just about cried.

Am I a scary, overprotective mom? Am I one of those moms whose whole life is her kids and who will be hovering over them their whole lives, calling them up when they are grown adults to tell them to wear boots on a snowy day? Am I a CRAZY MOMMY?

I like to think it’s the TV mommys who are out of whack. Truth be told, “healthy” probably falls somewhere in the middle.

It’s interesting watching this show as a parent because my sympathies are totally and completely with the parents of the babies, not the teens. The teens can suck it, for all I care. They’re stressed because their borrowed babies are crying, or because their partner isn’t doing their share, or they can’t figure out how to put the crib together — TOO BAD. The parents have to sit in a little room and watch their kid cry for hours because you don’t know how to feed them, how to change them, how to PUT JAMMIES ON THEM AT BEDTIME.

It’s really quite excruciating to watch, and it’s not even my own baby. I don’t know how the parents are standing it.

Three of the parents felt the need to intervene yesterday — they went over to the house to offer advice on how to stop the baby from crying. In all cases I thought their visits were more than justified — hell, I would have been over there kicking ass myself after about three minutes of listening to Little Miss Sunshine cry.

Naturally the lectured teens were not so welcoming of the advice. One girl in particular got super sulky and refused to have anything more to do with the baby, leaving her boyfriend to handle the baby exclusively. Not very mature, but I have to say I have been there myself, and not too many years ago, either. I don’t react well to criticism, even the constructive kind, and I’m am quite prone to overreact and spend the whole day pouting.

BUT STILL. Sympathies? With the parent. GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED AND CARE FOR THAT BABY.

It’s fascinating to me how much being a parent has changed my entire reaction to the world. My emotional responses and my judgments of other people are all 100% informed by the fact that I have children. It’s scary sometimes but there is nothing I can do to change it — I am a mommy, it’s who I am, more than anything else.

There was a time when I thought I didn’t want to have kids, ever. I was afraid of the responsibility, afraid of the constant worry, afraid of how my life would change. So when I did have kids, I swore I’d never be one of those parents who was all, “Oh, you’ll never understand until you have kids! You should have a few! It’s so great!” Because I’d remember that I wasn’t sure about having kids myself, and that it isn’t the right choice for everyone.

I still stand by that — kids are not for everyone, as this show is trying to illustrate — but it is so true that you can’t understand what it means to be a parent until you are one. Your own kids will never understand the parental point of view until they are right there in it themselves.

It’ll be interesting to see if the teens on this show gain any real understanding of how being a parent changes your whole way of thinking. I think they’ll have the crap scared out of them in terms of the work involved, but will they really learn about how you have to adapt your thoughts so that your kid always comes first?

I guess I’ll have to keep watching to find out. DAMMIT.

We’ve had one hell of a day here with the Captain. He’s been sick over and over again with “the runs,” as my mother would say. I cannot believe his little body contains so much poop, nor so much fluid.

Then, during dinner of toast and apple juice, he topped it all off by casually turning to the side and vomiting all over the table, chair, and floor.

The crazy thing — and the thing that tells us that this is not just a bug — is that he actually feels okay. He’s perky. He’s running around and ready to play. He wanted to go to his soccer game tonight. He still has an appetite and kept asking for more food all day long. There’s no fever, either. So all is well…except that once an hour or so he has to run to the bathroom to be violently ill. Then, it’s back to squirting water guns at his sisters. It makes us wonder just how long this has been going on, that he can treat it as par for the course, part of his every day living, nothing special, nothing to get upset about.

I’m upset about it. I hope tomorrow’s doctor’s appointment gives us some answers.

One great part of my day, however, came via Gal Smiley, who is so sweet and adorable and loving sometimes. She was having chocolate pudding after dinner — she had it yesterday for the first time ever and is IN LOVE, it is the greatest thing EVER, and she may never eat anything else ever again. So I said to her, “Boy, you really love that chocolate pudding. It’s a good treat, isn’t it?” And she said, “YES.”

Then, when she was finished, I said, “Gal Smiley, it’s been a hard day around here, can I have a hug?” And she gave me one of her patented Best Hugs Ever, in which she leaps into your arms and throws her arms and legs around you and gives you a monster hug that transmits love to the entire known universe.

Then she said excitedly, “Maybe THIS could be my treat instead!”

Giving up chocolate pudding for the chance to hug her mom. Now that makes my day.

Gal Smiley has found a long-forgotten bear at the bottom of her toy bin.

“What’s the name of this bear?”

“Bandit.”

“Panda?”

“No, BANdit.”

“Band-aid?”

“No, BanDIT.”

“Dammit?”

“Close enough.”

I recently made a vow not to talk about things in this blog that my kids might, someday, find truly embarrassing. After all, they’re entitled to a little privacy, a little dignity.

Today, I’m breaking that promise, because I feel that the internet has the right, no, the NEED, to know that the Captain has been pretty sick this past week. He has DIARRHEA.

(Captain to me last night at bedtime: “Is DIARRHEA runny poop?” Me: “Yes, that’s exactly right.” Him: “They why do they call it DIARRHEA? Why can’t they just say ‘runny poop’?” Me: “Um…because people like to name things? I guess?”)

I took him to the doctor yesterday and because he hasn’t gained any weight this past year and has ongoing digestive issues with no (apparent) new food allergies, she’s going to test him for celiac disease. It’s something something we’ve been wondering about for a while, because the Captain seems to fit with all the symptoms, including the long, long eyelashes. Did you know that thick, long eyelashes is a symptom? Crazy. Anyway, we’re happy about this test as it’ll give us an answer one way or the other and then we can move on to worrying about new things.

Such as: cystic fibrosis. Which I TOTALLY do not believe he has, not for one second. But our doctor wants to test for that, too, JUST IN CASE. She said to me, “Now, DO NOT PANIC, but I will also run a cystic fibrosis test too, JUST IN CASE.” Then she said, “I can tell you are TOTALLY PANICKING.” I like to think I’m pretty cool about all things medical but having your kid tested for cystic fibrosis is a cause for minor panic, I think. But seriously, I really really really doubt he has it. Really.

Because it’s usually the simplest explanation, and so even more likely than celiac’s or THAT OTHER ONE is that he’s picked up some sort of parasitic bug from the playground. I guess in this scenario I’m supposed to be all, Yay, Parasites! But really I’m thinking, EW GROSS.

So when your kid potentially has parasites, that means you are about to be welcomed to the world of poop tests. Yay, Poop Tests! Oh wait…EW GROSS.

This morning we had to get him to poop in a manner in which the poop could be collected, which is strategically difficult, to say the least. Our doctor recommended putting saran wrap on the back part of the toilet to catch the poo. Thank goodness I am married to a genius and Sir Monkeypants came up with the much better plan of using our training potty.

We went poop hunting. And we scored a good catch.

Then I had to scoop the poop into three different receptacles with three different scooping devices and let me just say, today I have proven that I am a GOOD MOM. I believe I earned myself an automatic A+ Mommy day today with my poop scooping.

I did make Sir Monkeypants deliver our brown bag of poop receptacles to the lab, though. I couldn’t face the public humiliation. Plus I didn’t want my car to smell like poop.

We should have the poop test results in a couple of days, and then it’s back to the doctor on Thursday for those other tests for other stuff. You know the ones.

This morning I’m a little mixture of worried about my kid…sad that I can’t make him feel better…and elated that I have battled poop and WON.

And funnily enough, all three situations call for CHOCOLATE. Thank goodness there’s a new bag of Oreos in the house.

My Horns Of Pregnancy were rather pronounced this morning so I thought I’d capture them on film:

It’s too bad Buffy isn’t still on the air. Between my little horns and my rather prominent eye teeth, I’d be a shoo-in for a part as Buffy’s nemesis. I guess I’ll have to settle for a demon-of-the-week spot on Reaper.

One thing I am definitely going to add to that pamphlet I am writing on Things They Do Not Tell You In Pregnancy Books is a section on the Horns Of Pregnancy.

When you’re pregnant, all the lovely estrogen flowing around your body that makes you crave chocolate and makes you bitch at the paperboy for leaving the paper ON THE PORCH instead of IN THE MAILBOX, AGAIN, also makes your hair grow thick and shiny and lovely. You don’t lose many hairs while you’re pregnant, so you can go ahead and grow out those Rapunzel locks you’ve always wanted.

Then, after the baby is born, your hormones all get out of whack and the estrogen drops and the testosterone rises and it’s hell on your hair. Suddenly it starts falling out in thick clumps all over the place, like you have suddenly adopted three German shepherds and two Persian cats and they’ve all decided to shed at once.

If you’re nursing you can probably delay the hair fallout for a few months after the birth, maybe until you introduce solids. But it’ll happen, sooner or later. A few months after I had Gal Smiley, my sister-in-law came to visit with her two boys. I still cringe when recalling my older nephew, AvidReader, complaining that he couldn’t play cars on the floor because “There’s too much hair in the way!” Time for an emergency vacuum!

I’ve never seen any descriptions of this phenomenon in books but it’s my own personal theory that the change in hormone levels causes something akin to male pattern baldness. Your hair falls out because of the sudden lack of estrogen, and it falls out just like it would on a 40-year-old man looking down the barrel of a mid-life crisis. You get little bald patches at your temples as your hairline starts to recede from your forehead in the familiar arrow-shaped pattern.

What this means that eventually, when it grows back in, you get tiny little tufts of hair on either side of your head, just at the outside corners of your eyes.

Usually these little short hairs are a little bit curly — or in my case, very curly. So they don’t like to lie flat. They like to curl upwards.

And if you are wearing your hair pinned back a lot these days — because, say, you have a small baby and can’t actually get it together enough to blow dry for 15 minutes every morning — then these little curls, standing straight up in the air on either side of your head, stand out quite a bit.

Thus I give you, the Horns Of Pregnancy.

I’m only just now getting to the stage where my Little Miss Sunshine horns have finally grown out enough so that, with judicious combing, I can hide them inside my regular hair. Every so often, though, one of them will pop out and curl up and mark me as a recent mom.

Ah, my very last horns. I’m feeling a little sentimental about them already.