I pushed Lucy in the Swift, navigating the crowd at a McDonald’s at an oasis on the turnpike. Two bags were slung over my shoulder while Abby walked to a table with her Happy Meal.

Yes, I was proud of myself. Five hours from home, a little more than halfway to my parents’ house, and no one had yet thrown a fit I couldn’t tame. OK, so I had Dora going in the DVD player since we backed out of our driveway – don’t judge me.

I fed Lucy on my lap when a middle-aged couple sat down in the booth to my left. We said “hi, how are you,” and Abby turned on the charm: she stared, refused to talk.

The woman was friendly and curious. Yes, we were in the middle of a nine- or 10-hour trip. Yep, by myself. Yeah, we have a DVD player. She’s 6 months, she’s 2.

They were going to a city near my brother’s house, and we nodded and said “Oh,” like you do when you realize there’s a coincidence that’s really quite boring. (Confession: I’m really, really awkward in these situations. Hi, I’m at a glorified truck stop. I’m not looking to make friends.)

Abby was dancing her chicken nuggets over the table so I declared us done. I loaded up baby paraphernalia while they remarked on how tough it must be for me to keep it all together.

Haaa, you should see me on a Tuesday night at home when my husband’s working.

We wished each other safe travels and I ducked into the bathroom, where someone had the NERVE to flush a toilet in there. Then! She used an electric hand-dryer. Another toilet flushed, more hand dryers went off – apocalypse was upon us, if you asked Abby.

A young woman fled the stalls without washing her hands. Another rolled her eyes at me. (Like her crying is my choice? Every few months I like to bring my kids to the turnpike bathrooms just to see how loud they scream. Yes.)

Then amid the throng of fleeing women re-emerged the lady from the table.

“Could I help you?”

Uh, yes … But.

“I could just stand here with them if you’d like to go,” she offered, her hands on Abby’s shoulders. I was still taping up Lucy’s diaper.

I hesitated. I wanted to say yes. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “No, I’ll be OK. I’ll just corral them in the handicap stall. We’ll be fine.”

It was her turn to feel awkward — “Oh! OK, that’s fine! Well, you have a safe trip!” and she sprinted away.

I felt like a major dweeb.

What did I think? She’d kidnap my kids while I was in a bathroom stall? She didn’t even give off a kidnapper vibe.

Plus, unless they had a Dora DVD in their car, she’d be bringing my kids back to me within a mile or two.

Still. Awkward. I think I made the right choice. I didn’t end up on the nightly news, so that’s at least one point in my favor.

Sometimes I feel like if we have to have one more conversation about money I’ll collapse on the floor heaving sobs like Abby does when I tell her she can’t watch “Go Diego, Go” before bed.

The latest round is the next carseat: I’m about as wimpy as any 5-year-old with pretzel rods for legs and an unhealthy video game addiction. Lucy’s about 50 lbs., right? Or maybe like 14, 15 lbs.? Rounded up to the nearest 50 lbs., she’s pretty heavy for me to carry in her infant seat, and using the stroller from the driveway to the side door of our house seems like overkill. We’re going to need a bigger carseat in a few months anyhow, why wait? Right?

I started shopping around for a convertible car seat; I’m comparing which “grow” into booster seats, which ones are too big for our car, which ones have cup holders (because that’s apparently very important in buying a device that strives to do nothing but save your kid’s life).

I’ve watched more videos of crash-test dummy children getting their necks snapped than a mother ever, ever should, especially if she wants to get in a car again with her baby. I waded through the reviews, I cross-checked the standouts for poor safety ratings – I did all my homework. Gold star for Mama, right?

Til that money thing comes up again.

“I’m going to go check out these two car seats before I buy one,” I said.

“Car seats?”

“Just one, for the baby. A regular one like we got for Abby.”

“How much?”

“About a hundred bucks.”

He sighed.

“What?”

“Why does it seem like we’re always spending so much money on them?”

“On ..? The kids? Gee, I don’t know, no one ever mentioned how expensive they are.”

“Are we OK?”

“Yes, we’re OK, but we keep having to buy stuff.”

“I know! Like clothes and food, it’s such a DRAG.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sorry. OK, we’ll wait on the carseat for a little while.”

I’m OK with waiting – that’s not my point. My forearms are going to get in such serious shape no one’ll be laughing.

But new babies are such a shock to our family’s financial world. A completely expected one this time – the neverending stream of hospital bills? Yawn, yeah, so what. But at almost 6 months, we’re beginning to realize it really does never end. How’s that for a frightening Halloween-gram – Boo! After formula it’ll be food! After diapers it’s preschool! Swimming lessons! Soccer club! More fruit snacks! Jeans! Braces!

And all I wanted was a carseat.

Three years ago we needed cash. Pregnant with Abby, we looked around to sell anything we weren’t (or, I wasn’t) emotionally attached to – like Dave’s car.

Dave’s two-door car was the bane of my pregnant life’s idiosyncrasies. It smelled like Cheetos and we don’t even eat Cheetos. Gum wrappers wrapped in dusty balls held on by greasy french fry residue littered the floor. CD cases missing CDs and CDs without their cases all floated around under my feet, and none ever matched.

Why yes, it was the car that drew me to him when we first started dating. The ladies love the unidentified smells of a bachelor’s car …

Anyhow. Enough about the gem he so graciously brought to our marriage. We sold it to someone who needed it for their teenager (so you know that car’s story line never improved).

We’ve been dancing around with one car ever since. We work at the same place, we live together, we have the same friends – how hard could it be?, we said, tossing aside the polite advice that we’d regret it with a shrug: “Yeah, but we’re saving a lot of money.”

That part’s true: when Dave’s at work I am miles from Target. The purses and shoes and sweaters I didn’t buy over the last three years have heated our home and fed our dog.

Well. Apologies to the dog but I’ve had it.

Ever tried to get a guy out of bed in the morning when the alarm goes off? Ever had to sit in the driveway reading library books to two cranky kids while he does whatever it is a balding man does to his hair in the morning? Argh.

Friday did it: Dave had to be somewhere at 6 to carpool somewhere so I could have the car to go home. I worked til 5:45. We had to get the kids by 6. Dave needed a sandwich, he decided at 5:40.

At 6 I was still waiting in the rain outside of work for him to swing back around with his sub and the car … Fuming. Had it been sunny, perhaps we could’ve lasted another week. But standing there in the rain, wanting nothing more than to be home and to share a beer with my mom over Skype, I’d had it. I pictured my kids’ babysitter setting the girls out by the curb. I pictured Dave lollygagging at the sub shop, deciding on his toppings.

None of this does anything for my complexion, if you’re wondering.

My phone rang a little after 6: “I ran home and grabbed a sweatshirt,” he said. Oh! Oh, you just ran home and I’m here in the rain and our kids are late getting picked up and how’s your sandwich, DEAR?

Enough.

I expect the level of marital satisfaction to climb a few points now that I’m not tethered to his schedule and our one car. Well, it can’t hurt.

She wanted to be a dinosaur. For someone who changes her mind about what she wants for breakfast between sliding out of bed and crawling up in her booster chair, Abby was set on her Halloween costume.

“I be dinosaur.” “Dinosaur RAAARRR. I be dinosaur. I be, I, I, I be T. REX!” so she stuttered over the last three weeks.

But then we were selling back baby clothes at a consignment store – because the baby’s still not sleeping and I vowed at 4 a.m. the other day that I am not the kind of mother who can handle sleep deprivation for going on 5-and-a-half months now. I snagged a sweet $6 Halloween costume for Lucy off the rack. Six dollars and some tax later we walked out with a butterfly costume (and a sizeable check for the clothes, proof that deciding you’re done with kids does pay).

The T. Rex dreams are extinct now. A few days later, Abby and I had no more than strolled past a Halloween display in another store when she grabbed a pink butterfly costume and wasn’t letting go. “I want DIT one. DIT ONE, Mama, I wear DIT one. Takey tags off, Mama. Mama, take, takey tags off. I be buff-fly like! My! Sister!”

This is cute now because in about a year she’ll scream when her sister copies her. And, OK, butterflies are adorable. Little antenna stick out of their hoods, come on! Come on!

But her copying spreads in an exhausting way: Lucy listens to a CD during the night, a fact not lost on Abby the second Abby walked in Lucy’s room. “WHAT DIT?” she inquired, pointing at the radio. “It’s a CD –” I began, but Abby ran into her room to point and bounce up and down to have HER radio turned on.

OK …

And Lucy wore the cheerleading skirt for the Packers – her football dress, Abby says – so Abby cried until we dug out her Bengals “football dress” (don’t judge, it’s her dad’s doing). “Baby wear football dress? I wear football dress, too.”

I get that she’s just trying to copy cat, because she does it with us, too (Note to self: no time like the present to stop that swearing habit). But this isn’t about just butterfly costumes and CD players: “I wear diapers too,” she says, proof I think she’ll be in college before she gives that up.

And don’t get me started on the meltdown when she doesn’t get to ride in the Zippy when we have Lucy in her stroller. Woman! I have just two hands, I argue. Instead I say “hey! If you don’t cry we can watch Dora later!” Well. That works about 93 percent of the time, which isn’t that bad. This phase can’t outlast her Dora obsession, right?

Hm.

“I go trick-or-treat!” Abby said. No, more like yelped – hopping up and down over eyeing her costume hanging up in her sister’s room.

I wasn’t quite sure how to tell her … trick-or-treating … yeah, uh, that was last Sunday, sweetie. When you were on the couch. “Getting sick,” to put it politely.

So instead I became my own favorite mother – because I only have a few months left until all of these lies I’m telling are exposed by someone or something or at the very least she develops long-term memories and when she’s 13 she’ll call me out on it – and told her “yes! Yes you are going trick-or-treating!”

And then I had to think … Knowing approximately zero people in the neighborhood who would care if we showed up on, say, Nov. 8 in Halloween garb to beg for candy, we had to get creative.

See, this wasn’t about the candy or even the a-dor-a-ble antennae on top of the girls’ butterfly costumes (but, OMG, antennae on babies is like whipped cream on chocolate fudge; try to keep your finger off of them, just try. You can’t). I was angry – livid, I you might say – about this whole stomach flu incident because to my irrational working-mother mind this Halloween business is something I earned: One of those motherhood moments you get to take cute pictures of your kids in, scrapbook or post on Facebook … Sigh. No, instead I was watching “Princess and the Frog” and peeking out from behind our closed curtains at all the other families out trick-or-treating.

Yes, I’m aware how lame that sounds.

So I sent Dave, also half-dying of the stomach flu (because he half-dies whenever he’s sick, anytime, any reason), to the drug store Nov. 1 to pick up half-off candy, and I stashed it on top of the fridge and we’re going trick-or-treating Easter-egg style Saturday morning … Meaning I have to make sure I hide them well enough the dog doesn’t get them but not so well that the girls can’t find them.

And we’ll get away with it, this year, because she has no idea.

This is one of those moments I’m going to file away and pull out next time I have to put in the “Dora the Explorer” DVD so I can do dishes. Or nap. “See! I’m not a bad mom! I did that Halloween thing!” Oh yeah. Working short-term memories to my benefit.

I love an underdog – all that drama. All that … underdoggedness. My latest “awww” case: My own baby.

See, my poor baby doesn’t yell “touchdown!” while we’re watching football or make us laugh by repeating “I approve this message” (sidebar: Hurry, Nov. 2). She doesn’t charm us with “I do by’self!”, because even if she wanted to tell us that, she’s pretty helpless.

Lucy doesn’t follow plots, she doesn’t point out the tiniest details we miss like Abby does – the fuzz on the newly vacuumed carpet, the Hershey’s kisses hidden (though apparently not well enough) behind the bananas on the counter. She doesn’t even have teeth to introduce to chocolate, anyhow, despite my assertions that’s why she’s so cranky.

No, Lucy wakes us up at night screaming like someone’s just told her how babies are made (I KNOW, that was my response, too!). She’s arresting in her chubby-cheeked cuteness, but her clothes have fiber pills on them from being washed so many times before with Abby. Poor Lucy. She’s 93 percent work and 7 percent play – but that figure changes when she sleeps through the night. Yeah. Then it’s more like 90/10.

If ever there were an underdog in the fight for our attention it’s Lucy.  So I’ve started what I told myself I wouldn’t do: I’m playing the “she’s my baby” card. I’m playing it all day long. I am the marketing firm for this baby. I am the CEO in charge of making sure she’s not living in the shadow of her older sister’s ginormous personality.

I am underpaid and underappreciated, if you were wondering how that was working for me.

Dave would rather act out dinosaur sounds or play hide and seek with Abby than walk around the first floor bouncing an overtired baby. I get that (me too). But I’m the dork running behind Dave and Abby, whining “Wait! Wait, you forgot Lucy!”, and I’m hiding behind the recliner with a baby in my lap hoping my toddler holds interest in the game long enough to come find me. You know, just to prove you can have fun with babies too.

And the baby chooses this time to spit up on me. You know, to punctuate this fact.

Awesome.

Maybe this is where Abby years from now will point and say “AHA! You openly admit to spoiling Lucy!”

And I’ll have to say “yeah … but you don’t understand: Babies are work! I was trying to keep us together! I was trying to avoid someone trading her in for a new couch! I didn’t even think we could get much for her in a trade-in because she didn’t even sleep through the night! I mean, uh … I love you both, equally!”

Abby has a set of animals and dinosaurs – a plastic horse, cow, a wolf, a giraffe, some T Rexes. Tyrannasauruses Rex? Whatever. She always makes me play with the giraffe and the cow, and she always begs me to make them talk to each other and the two dinos she holds in her chubby hands.

“Hi Dinosaur, how are you,” Cow asks. “Good,” the dinosaurs always answer. Then she begs me to ask again, to make Cow talk. “How are you giraffe?” “Good.”

“MAMA, makie Cow talk!”

Sigh. “How are you, dinosaur?” Etc.

It’s cute. It is, and it’s one of my favorite little moments with her. But I’ve got the endurance of a gnat when speaking in Cow or Giraffe voices, so after about seven minutes I’m hearing the dryer stop or Lucy squirms on my lap and I break away, leaving Abby with her animals.

Just a few months ago she would’ve dropped the animals to “help” me do laundry or “help” me find Lucy’s binky, but now it’s like, once I leave, a whole separate world floats down around her and we all disappear.

Yeah, I do get a lot more done … But the entertaining part is listening to Abby in this little world of hers, trying to work out the intricacies of our lives. All the tough stuff she doesn’t understand comes to life between the T Rex and the stegasaurus.

“I go work. I makie money,” one says, and she puts one on the coffee table.

“I go work?” she has the other dinosaur ask.

“No,” she answered, because Steggie had to go to the babysitter’s.

“I play aminals,” she says to herself. “No, Mama go to meeting.”

“Yets go meeting,” she says. “No, I go church. No, I go work. I stay home wit Mama? No, Mama go work.”

What. What, kid – give me a break, ask where Daddy is, geez. Step on my fragile, guilt-ridden heart.

If it were a choice, this is where I’d collapse and play animals and tell her dinosaurs and Giraffe and Cow that I’ll stay home this time and play, or that we can pretend it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work.

But … she’s playing by herself, which is a developmental milestone enough that I should feel a little relieved that she can’t be too scarred by my absences. Right? Umm. We’ll decide that later.

Everything is “mine.”

Not mine, of course, but hers. “Mine.” “Dat MINE.” “Mama, dat MINE.” Anyone who’s spent 2 seconds with a toddler knows that what she’s getting all territorial about, 90 percent of the time, isn’t actually hers. And so we teach another lesson: Life is hard.

Case in point: Yesterday, 6 p.m.

When the four of us barge through the door after work, the diaper bag slides from my shoulder onto the floor. The baby carrier is set down with an “Ughhhhh, sigh.” Dave dashes for the fridge or the bathroom or the mailbox; Abby grabs her cup and runs to the living room.

Every day, predictable like an ear infection after a cold, this is our routine.

But yesterday I’d hardly dropped the bag before Abby was kneeling at my feet, shrieking “NO MAMA, DAT MY diaper bag! MINE. DAT MINE!”

“What do you need, Abby?” I ask in my most polite tone (or maybe I said “What? do you want?!” in that I just-worked-nine-hours-and-your-sister-didn’t-sleep-last-night tone).

“MY diaper bag.”

OK, weird enough: I just let it go while she dug around inside it while I mixed up Lucy’s rice cereal.

“No, dat MY bowl,” Abby said, one hand still trying to dig out who-knows-what from the bottom of the now-almost-empty diaper bag.

STOP THE PRESSES: Mama’s using one of her plastic bowls for the baby’s cereal!

“It’s everyone’s bowl,” I tried.

“No, MINE. I want.” She shot up, arms outstretched to the bowl in my hand.

Uh-uh, sister. No. “Nope, your sister’s using it now. You have to share.” I stood firm like a good little mom, setting Lucy in the Zuma.

But Abby doesn’t do “share” yet. She followed us into the dining room with her chant: “MY bowl. Dat MY bowl.”

“No.”

“MINE.”

A bowl. Really. And your dad is WHERE, I thought, trying the “I’m going to ignore your behavior” game. And it worked! For a good second and a half.

Out of the corner of her big blue hawk-like eyes she spotted a movement in HER living room: The dog. The DOG, OH the horror, the DOG had one of HER socks, on HER couch.

Slap your hands to your cheeks! Scream like a swamp monster just materialized! She tramped into the living room. “Dat MY couch,” she informed the sorry dog. “Dat MY sock. Mama! Mama! Dat MINE!”

Wailing ensued, but Lucy slurped her cereal in the Zuma in front of me, content and oblivious. (Liking one child more than another for a split second is an impulse I can’t control sometimes.)

“Hold on, Abby. Mama’s feeding your sister,” I called.

“NOOO! DAT MY MAMA!”

Sigh.

Someday I’ll laugh about this.

The push-and-ride toy I trip over now won’t be part of my landscape in a couple years. I get that. Bad news is, it’ll be replaced by a tricycle, a soccer ball, and a giant stuffed animal Grandma just couldn’t help but send our way. I’m sure of it.

Yeah, we’re outgrowing our house. Every inch my baby grows strains the seams a little bit more. Dave’s ever so perceptive about my subtle hints of wanting a new home (subtle as in me declaring war on my house everytime I try to put a baking dish away without knocking over the stack of reusable containers).

He took the step of emailing a real estate agent, of picking out and sending me links to homes for sale in the area, and of having the agent come tell us what price she’d recommend listing our home.

And it’s begun: We have to get the house to look like no one – especially two kids – lives in it. Easy like pie.

That pile of junk in the basement – oops! Oops, sorry, not “junk,” but Dave’s precious bin of every newspaper the budding journalist had a hand in creating since college, on top of his dental X-rays from primary school because YOU NEVER KNOW – needs to meet its end. Those 1980s end tables have outlived their fashion and usefulness.

That garage … Paint would help, I guess, but opening the door …. Well, we just don’t do that a lot.

We’re no worse than the average American – we’re not hoarders (have you SEEN that show? No, we don’t collect animals or empty fast food bags). But fixing our clutter problem is worse now, as I have an almost-5-month-old baby on my hip who looooves me. I mean LOOOOOVES. And probably not me so much as being perched on my hip 24/7.

I love that she’s chosen me as her favorite – honestly. I’ve seen how quickly that can change (hello, every evening of my life when Abby sees her dad leave for the second half of his second-shift job). Lucy’s smiles could bring down the house, thrift store-bound furniture and all.

But, dang, two hands are so, well, HANDY. You can pack and toss and organize about 650 percent faster, by my calculations.

I put her in the Zuma with some toys and I run from the basement to the living room with STUFF, and she wants out before I’ve regained my normal breathing. I lay her on the floor with some toys and she’s crying before I finish saying “I’ll be right back!”

“Endearing”? I think that’s the word I’m looking for. Yes, and “darling.” And also “at this rate I’ll be finished in 2015.”

I’ve heard “no” more times in the last couple of weeks than … someone who’s heard a lot of “no”s.

“Come here, let’s put on your shoes.” “NO.”

“Could you hand Mama the bottle lid that fell on the floor?” “NO.”

“Peanut butter bread?” “NO. (Wait a few seconds …) Peanut butter bwead! I want butter bwead!” (Because now it’s her idea! Oohh!)

Bathtime, “NO.” Play outside, “No. No pay outside.” Kiss daddy before he goes back to work, “No.”

The kid needs to expand her vocabulary. I’ve been doing a lot of deep-breathing, if you were wondering. And a lot of trying to nip it in the bud: “Excuse me? Yes, let’s get shoes on, that’s not a choice.” Cute. Really cute, Erin; Mama With An Attitude is really appropriate here.

This is really not the roll-with-it-and-make-it-into-a-lesson attitude I thought I’d be creative enough to use any old morning when I’m trying to dress her and she’s flailing as soon as her feet make it halfway down the pant leg, like I’m attempting to dress her in steel wool.

That was this morning. It’s 6:45 a.m., I’m wrestling a toddler to wear pants with the grace of someone trying to catch a pig and I know –  in hindsight I say this – she’s just showing me how independent she is. Independent! “Independent.” OK, fair enough; but that’s not the adjective I was using at so early before breakfast, but that’s neither here nor there.

“No”s don’t surprise me. No one’s ever said “my kid’s never talked back” (aloud, to other parents, for fear of mad-crazy retaliation); I had this on my radar.

But until it was 6:45 – the morning after Lucy was awake from 3 to 4:30 FOR NO REASON, so help me, what reason is there to blame now (no sign of teeth, tried that one). All I wanted was to dress Abby, to drag myself to work, to come home and veg with 20 minutes of Dora before their bathtime, and to crash into bed.

“NO.”

Argh.

Well. Good morning, independence. THANKS FOR NOTHING.