Here’s the setup: A., me and kids are coming back from our morning walk outside. I am carrying Ulysses’s bike with a front wheel full of the nastiest dog poo you can imagine. The Dandelion has just decided to start an impromptu potty training 15 minutes ago and took off his diaper.

At the entrance to the building we meet our neighbor, a new father to a 2 weeks old baby girl. He is in his sweats, pale, looking just a little better than what is currently dripping from Ulysses’s bike’s front wheel. He sees us, and get this expression on his face that is somewhere between an immense relief and a plea for help.

“Say” he says, “what on earth do you do when the baby doesn’t sleep AT ALL?” “She doesn’t sleep at all?” we ask, “No she doesn’t. We think it’s gas.”

You know me, I immediately assume full parental-guide veteran-mother-of-two been-there-done-that position and start talking to him about breastfeeding, and positions, and nutrition, all the while promising him that it gets better, really it does.

While I’m in full mambo-jumbo mode, I catch out of the corner of my eye A.’s face, and he is starting to get this incredulous look on it. So I stop and I turn to him, to see what’s it about. A. takes advantage of this momentary pause, faces our neighbor and says: “She is standing here with a smelly, nasty, poo dripping toy that she just carried for 8 blocks, and I, well I just got peed on. I don’t know what to tell you dude, but getting better? That’s a bit of an overstatement.”

Then we both collapsed on the ground laughing and our poor neighbor went back upstairs, presumably to write his “Good Bye Cruel World” letter.