If you can't laugh at yourself ...

I don't know where I picked up this notion, but I thought "Mommy brain" was supposed to quit after your baby is no longer a baby — you know, after your nights are no longer punctuated every few hours by that bottomless milk pit you spawned.

Lack of sleep and even several consecutive nights of interrupted sleep can make you feel like a walking, talking advertisement for Idiots R Us.

Even though my daughter has long since kicked her midnight milk habit, she has developed other nocturnal habits that deprive me of my beloved Zs, namely bedwetting, needing to be soothed after a bad dream and climbing into my bed and depositing her ice cold feet onto my bare legs.

Some nights are better than others, but lately I feel like l did when she was a newborn — only then, I could nap when she napped. Now, I have to go to work!

How DO women with three or four children under the age of 5 do it? Do they ever adjust? Do they make it on pure survival instinct?

My "Mommy brain" has started to affect my work. The other day, I completely forgot about an assignment and only remembered it when I happened to drive past the place I was supposed to be 10 minutes before that! Thank goodness, they also were running behind, because when I finally arrived, I realized the battery in my camera was dead and had to run back to the office to get a different camera!

And today, while writing this post, my desk phone rang. It was Danielle McCracken from Wheeling Country Day School. As soon as I heard her voice I looked at the clock. Darnit! It was 2 and I was supposed to be there at 1 to take pictures of their International Day festivities. So there I was, writing about being forgetful, and I forgot another assignment.

If I can't get more sleep, perhaps I should drink more caffeine. It might take a tanker full of coffee to jumpstart my brain! Feel free to send me some Tim Horton's gift cards!

And now for some laughs, courtesy of 4-year-old Emma:

— We were watching one of her kid movies the other day, sitting together in the recliner. As a "scary" scene came on, she reached up and covered MY eyes.

— She was wearing a big gold medal with a red, white and blue strap around her neck when I came home from work the other day. She said, "Look, Mom: This is for the United States of the American flag!"

— If she wants a cheese sandwich (not grilled), she'll say she wants a "fake grilled cheese."

There are many more Emma-isms, but of course, I forget them!