That little Andy of mine is such a cutie. I know that as a mother, I'm kind of biased, but my kid is definitely in the top five percent of cute babies worldwide. And he just gets cuter! One of my clients, whose daughter is two weeks older than Andy, emailed me today and asked if Andy was giggling yet. Apparently her daughter just started giggling last week. And I wanted to respond that my kid's been giggling for months! Months! And that he is obviously advanced, and that the giggling is shoving him right into top three percent of cuties and that there's something seriously WRONG with her dumb little baby. But instead I played it cool and said, "Yeah, he's been giggling." Period, end of sentence, teeth on tongue.

Mothers usually don't appreciate it if you refer to their offspring as dumb little babies.

Anyway, all of that being said, there is one kid that is slightly cuter than my Andy. I know, it hardly seems possible, but his name is Robert, and he's one of the babies at Andy's day care. He is ALWAYS crying when I see him, and he has the most sweetly pitiful face, with gigantic, watery, red-rimmed blue eyes. His cry is sad and soulful, and the pure misery that this kid must endure somehow makes him especially cute. Funny how that works. I want to scoop up that sad little Robert and cuddle both him and Andy- Andy in my right arm, Robert in my left. I realize that this is making me sound like kind of a psycho, but I've really taken a shine to that little crybaby. That being said, I know it's inappropriate to pick up other people's babies at the day care, so I don't, but, believe me, I've been tempted. If I walked in and some strange lady was holding Andy, I would tackle her and beat her in the face with my purse. Some strange lady other than the day care providers, who, as I may have mentioned, are strange enough. It takes a special breed of woman to spend their days locked in a room with a bunch of babies, and it seems that one ingredient in that breed is battiness. Other ingredients include the desire to hold a job you can perform while not wearing shoes (socks only in the baby room) and a knack for not mixing up babies pacifiers, although I could swear that Andy was sucking on some other kid's binky when I picked him up yesterday. I tried not to make a federal case out of it.

And the phrase "sucking on some other kid's binky" has kind of a dirty ring to it, eh?

When I am not at work, I am with Andy. At this point, I'm having a hard time remembering when I was just out for dinner or drinks without my little guy. I don't like to be apart from him, and I fear that he may grow into a mama's boy who, at the age of 45, will live in my basement and spend Friday nights down at the senior center with me playing a few rounds of Bingo. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I could easily get a baby-sitter or just go out with the girls while Chris watches Winky, but that's not how I roll. At least not currently. I'm still adjusting to the working mom role and wanting to suck up every extra minute I can have with the little guy. This being said, for those of my friends who do not yet have children and are looking to do that soon, let this be a reminder. Go out to dinner NOW. Go to the movies, go anywhere, even just to the store, on a whim. Because when that baby comes, the amount of times you actually leave the house aside from work is an integer so low that it's barely an actual number.