Yes sir, that's MY baby (but only the good genes).

Sometimes, I'll write something and forget I wrote it, but I stumbled across this and it's funny...

Of course, all parents think of their little darlings as being the most beautiful beings on earth, especially new parents. This, I think, becomes less true the more kids you have and the longer you've been a parent.

We've all heard/told stories of how we thought our baby was beautiful, only to look at the pictures years later to realize that they were in fact barely human-looking.

Plus the more you gaze adoringly at your baby, the more imperfections you're bound to notice.

Then the blame game starts.

Accusatory tone "Wait, is that YOUR horrendous feet she's inherited?"

Off-put tone "Well, of course, he's always hitting his head, he's got YOUR huge forehead."

Sadly, baby M inspired this post, months ago, with his uncanny resemblance to Jabba the Hut. Happily, he's much better looking now, and on an unrelated note, looks less and less like my dear hubby.

Putting the "F" back into Fall

Ahhh, September!

A month heralding many good things, like the bright hues of children's hats and scarves, the leaves changing colour, fall fashions and of course, season premieres of all our favorite shows!

But September is also a dark month, a month heralding constant viruses brought home from daycare, the dreaded drama of having to dress kids in three times as many layers in the same amount of time each morning and above all, it's (gag) back to school month.

Of course, when it's the kids going back to school, it's fun! Who doesn't like shopping for cute knapsacks and matching lunchboxes? And now, there's even the excitement of purchasing the overpriced but oh-so-cute coordinated reusable sandwich bags!

But it's not the kids who went back to school, this devil-damned September, but their luckless parents. I, as an aging PhD student, who always gets mistaken for the prof and my husband as a young university professor, who always gets mistaken for a grad student. Sigh.

But that's not all.

That would be way too easy for our family.

So to keep things interesting (read impossible), hubby's job is 83 miles away. Which means that I am now:

1) going to school full-time

2) taking care of the baby full-time

3) taking care of the two older Ms from morning to daycare and from daycare to bedtime three days a week

4) spending quality time with the kids on Saturday (which usually involves many hours of Dora the Explorer for them and many hours with a toilet brush/broom/mop/duster for hubby and me)

5) cooking all day Sunday so I won't have to cook the rest of the week

6) so tired, I can hardly think, let alone formulate a coherent sentence (now that you know, you'll forgive me if my posts get fewer and far between and if you notice I've started to ramble)

7) engaged with my husband in the constant game of "Who's Got The Busiest Life And Is The Most Tired And Deserving Of Sleep?"

So then the logical question on everyone's lips is "how do you keep the romance alive??" and I am happy to tell you that the romance in my marriage is not dead.

Although it did suffer a couple of debilitating blows these past months, starting with a pregnancy scare a couple of weeks before I went back to school, which scarred us so bad I haven't even let hubby sneeze in my direction since.

Although it's not like he's been inclined to, anyway.

I can tell you right now, nothing kills the mood like September the Mood Killer, except October the Mood Slayer and November the Mood Slaughterer. Between grant proposals and idiot students and driving an hour and a half to and back from work, hubby's hardly had the energy to even wiggle his eyebrows lasciviously at me. And when he does, all he gets for his trouble  is a scathing set down from me about us having better things to do like tend to one (or more) screaming children or clean something or cook something or work on something or at least SLEEP!!

Plus the Weight Watchers has gone the way of the bathing suit and I've taken to knocking back the baked goods in a (so far successful) attempt not to start smoking again, but that is a drama better left for another blog.

So, although Mr Romance has been knocked to its knees, we are keeping him ALIVE, baby!

Because instead of bickering about who's got the most to do and who should wake up ten times a night to tend to bed wetting or night terrors or vampire children who are convinced that 4:30 am is "morning", we solicitously sacrifice ourselves for our other half..

So when my husband's head is about to explode because his grant proposal is due in three days and he's done nothing but fill out his name on the application, I volunteer to put aside everything and take the children out for the afternoon, even though I am sick and exhausted and nauseous from all the baked goods I've ingested that day and my own deadlines are looming. And in return, when a neighboring classmate invites me over to study at her house, hubby will selflessly put away his grant proposal for a few hours and bathe all three children by himself, while I bask in the peace and quiet of a childless household. And this good deed begets my offering to let him sleep in until 7:30 the next morning, since he had to work so late, which prompts him to drive me to school the next day and so on...

And that, dear reader, is far more romantic than any eyebrow wiggling or subsequent hanky-panky (and does not involve any risk of pregnancy).

I confess. I belong to the man who will give me an hour a day to do my homework and will do the dishes to boot.

And thankfully, there's always December and my sexy Santa suit to get us back in the mood...