Mean Lady has needed some help with Mean Baby while Mr. Mean Lady is out of town on business for a few weeks. It’s been a gas for me since I’m stuck in the middle of parenting a teenage mutant on the verge of getting a driver’s license. It also helps that she’s a girl, so I can buy cute clothes for her. Today, Mean Lady informed me I had bought more outfits for her daughter than she had.

I refuse to apologize. She should be happy I haven’t bought more. Have you seen how cute the clothes are at Baby Gap?

I’m so much more relaxed with Mean Baby than I was with Darling Son. I know it’s because he broke me in. And it pains me how nervous Mean Lady can get about baby care issues. And how hard it is for her when Mean Baby goes on a bender and decides not to nap and that nothing but being held constantly, chewing on something unauthorized, and making angry high-pitched noises will satisfy.

She called me at wits’ end last week and I had a sudden recollection of when my baby was hitting his second or third growth spurt and he was nursing for 45 minutes out of every hour for about 12 hours straight. I bet most mothers think of child abandonment or chucking the infant out the window. I did. We don’t do it, but I bet the thought occurs to most of us on some sleep deprived night when the sound of crying baby has been the only audible sound for hours.

I’m less likely to give in to what obviously deserves a Best Acting nod for the Eight Month Old Baby category. That girl fake cries at her mother, then turns to me and smiles, arms wide open. Evil baby! Poor Mean Lady! Mind you, she is sometimes really mad, like when she dozes off and awakens to realized she missed something. Her little tongue, vibrating in her still-toothless mouth, fists balled, back arched.

She doesn’t like being confined, either, and will fly out of any chair she isn’t strapped into. “Look Mom! I’m skydiving!” And she isn’t going to crawl. She wants to walk. Or run. I keep saying to people she’ll need a leash and some look at me horrified and talk about how much they hate leashes. But I have a high school friend who’s son was a runner — into traffic, out of malls into crowds. So she got him a leash, evil looks be damned. Mean Baby may be one of those runners, and as any honest parent will tell you, a running toddler is faster than you think.

I’m spending a few hours with Mean Baby tomorrow. I’ll love every second, and I hope Mean Lady enjoys her time off, too.