It's me, already.

Hello, my friends. This is called "lousy parenting."

Everyone knows you don't just leave a baby with a propped bottle. How can you bond when you're not holding them? How can he drink when the bottle is pointed the wrong way? Ah, he can stand to lose a few pounds anyway, and denying kids human touch toughens them up. Plus, who would even want to hug a kid who looked like that?

So, yeah, it's been awhile. But given the state of my last couple of weeks, which includes a full family bout of the swine flu (or some other flu with exactly the same symptoms) and busy, busy work, well, I've been lucky to even think any words much less put them to paper.

I had been waiting to write about this, because it was supposed to be a surprise for R's birthday, but then he guessed it and it's a little spoiled from that perspective but will still be fun in the end:

We're going to New York for a couple of days in December. Yes, we're leaving our darling children with their extended family in Charlotte while we jet up to that chic gateway that is the Newark airport and get cracking on 50+ hours of solid fun and romance. I snark, but in reality I am terribly excited. How long has it been since I have traveled anywhere at all other than to the hospital? Granted, those little 4-day "vacations" were pretty awesome, what with the blood and the painkillers and the unfamiliar babies, but they weren't quite a trip to New York.

I can't believe I am getting so crazy for a two-day vacation, but I'm betting that if you too have or have had small children you know exactly of what I speak. Love 'em - but I also love my husband, and man could we use a little break (I'm still hopeful for a trip to the Caribbean in March, but we'll probably need to spring that proposal on Grandma after she's had a chance to deal with this one). It seems like forever since we were alone together, and in fact it's been about 16 months. So this will be nice.

If things had gone according to plan, this Friday I would have been giving R. a birthday card with a copy of a reservation for Saturday night at the Ritz in Beaver Creek. Since I had been going on and on about how much he would like his present, a night at the Ritz would have been nice but likely a bit of a letdown since we've been there several times before. Then, as we were seated alone at some bar in Vail on Saturday night, I would have handed him another card - this time with the tickets to NYC and a copy of our hotel reservation. I was very pleased with my plan, which now that I think about it benefited me awfully nicely as well.

But alas. I was so stupid as to leave a copy of Lucky magazine open on the table, foolishly opened to a page of New York boutiques. Now, I don't think most men, seeing a copy of some random fashion mag opened to a page of stores would have automatically leapt to the conclusion that their wife was taking them to NY, but that's my darling!

"Is my birthday present a trip to New York?" he asked as he came into the room. I could feel my jaw clench and my eyes glass over.

"No," I said.

"Yes," I said.

"God damn it," I finished.

I suppose I could have stuck with "no" and he would have believed me, but then when I gave it to him, he would have just been like, "I guessed that." So I just went ahead and told him, and even though I had pictured we would chatter about it excitedly every day from now until December, we've barely mentioned it since. He hasn't had time to even think about it (again, with the swine flu), but hopefully soon we'll start to figure out what to pack into our short adventure.

Here's the hotel where we're staying: Ink48. It's in Hell's Kitchen, which I'm told is an area of town much improved in the last few years. I got a great deal at this place because it's only opening this month, which means it could be a total cluster when we're there, but it looked pretty nice. It's a Kimpton hotel, which usually means I'll like it.

Uh-oh. I just looked it up for the website and now it's opening November 1. Hmm.