Nine months old!

Wow, three-quarters of a year already gone. My little baby is no longer so little! He's crawling like a madman and pulling up and cruising with ease. He amazes me every day.

I thought his weight gain had picked up, but unfortunately that was not the case. His doctor recommended that we increase his solids intake dramatically. I'm feeling at a loss. He'll always eat his cereal and yogurt, but lately everything else is likely to be met with lips stubbornly sealed shut. Frustrating. I'll keep trying, of course, but in the meantime I figure he can eat as much cereal as he wants if it'll keep him growing!

5:00 a.m.

Oh, how I loathe 5:00 a.m.

When I get up at 5:00 a.m. my eyes water and my head aches. It's hours before I feel really awake, and the fatigue lingers all day. So it really sucks that Andrew has chosen 5:00 a.m. as his new wake-up time.

I am not a good mother at 5:00 a.m. I am irritable and impatient. I can think only of sleep and when I can get some more. "How soon can I get you to take a nap?" I think obsessively while I watch my baby play.

A 7:00 wake-up time would be ideal. I would grudgingly accept 6:00. But not 5:00. Please not 5:00.

Laziness is a hard habit to break.

I am a lazy person. There. I said it.

Take school, for example: I coasted along throughout my entire student career. I did well enough but I know I could have done better if I'd put a little effort into it.

- If I weren't so lazy I might have a career I was eager to get back to instead of a job I don't really care about.
- If I weren't so lazy my home would be much cleaner.
- If I weren't so lazy I wouldn't have gained weight after I had my baby.

I could go on and on, but what's the point? Oh, right. The point is that I know this about myself and I don't like this about myself, and yet — wait for it — I'm too lazy to do anything to change it.

See the problem?