Fast Facts

• Woog has yet to meet a dinosaur he didn't like.

• I'd like to try for a girl-child. But each time I see a pregnant woman, I feel nails-scratching-across-a-blackboard on my belly.

• Of all the people to end up together, Atch and I are both sulkers. It takes me a couple of hours to get over a snit. Atch takes two days, minimum.

• All four of us have cowlicks and curly hair. All four of us have terrible tempers. In a fit of rage, Woog once trashed his room. He turned six this year. I'm scared to think of what he'll be like as a teenager

• We've been married seven years. Some days it feels more like seventy.

• Atch promised to quit smoking by the time he turned forty. It's been 129 days since that day. And I'm still waiting...

• Despite his rep, Eli is one of the sweetest, most engaging toddlers on this earth - once he gets over his temper and sheds his I'm-mad-at-everyone take on the world.

• Atch hates cockroaches to the very depths of his being. When he sees one, he screams for me to come and kill it.

• Woog has three albums full of pictures that date from age zero to three. There are even more photographs of him still waiting to be organized. Eli has not one single printed picture to his name.

• I see dead people. I have horrible terrible visions of my sons getting into various sorts of accidents and dying in mortal pain, calling for help, and me powerless to do anything. I realize everyone goes sooner or later and my daily prayers include pleading with Papa God that when He does take them, to please whisk them away painlessly and very quickly. Morbid, I know. But still...

• Woog knows his way around a laptop better than I do.

• I am vain about aging. I dragged Atch to a derma clinic two weeks ago to have our first diamond peel together. I still can't get over the fact that his face looks better than mine.

• Woog is one of those shrill annoying kids who won't quit talking. Eli doesn't talk. At least not in sentences.

• I am guilty of letting my kids watch too much tv for their own good.

• But they eat loads of vegetables. Ha!

• Our idea of happiness is to pile all over each other at night in the family bed.