My son's first birthday party was supposed to be tomorrow. We had a big celebration planned with lots of family and friends. The food was going to be catered. There was going to be entertainment for the kids. Special goodie-bags have been stuffed.

The party has been postponed, thanks to my son's ongoing fight with asthma, or reactive airway disease.

Whatever this beast is that is getting the best of my son's lungs, I just wish it would go away.

He has been taking quick-relief asthma medicines and inhaled corticosteroids via nebulizer three times a day for ten days and oral steroids for four days now, and has not really shown much of an improvement.

He has vomited on me five times, and my husband once. His doctor told us he would have to be admitted to the hospital for two to three days today. We went to the ER to get him admitted, but they thought his oxygen level was good enough that he did not have to be hospitalized.

However, he is still wheezing and coughing.

There is nothing worse than seeing your child suffer. I sure hope he gets better soon.

Happy birthday, baby boy.

A few weeks ago, my husband said, "This has been the longest year of our lives... literally."

He was right.

We have spent more time awake during this past year than we had ever before. And it's all thanks to a diaper terrorist who is going to have his first birthday very soon.

And we're getting even less sleep now than we did three weeks ago, when my husband came up with this brilliant-for-him statement.

We thought my daughter was a bad sleeper. After the first three or four months of her life (which we can forgive because all newborn babies get up a lot to eat), my daughter woke up once per night. Until she was eleven months old, I nursed her back to sleep and she would stay asleep until seven or eight in the morning. When I stopped nursing, we would pop a binkie in her mouth, and she would go back to sleep straight away.

At the time, my husband thought our daughter was a terrible sleeper because she woke up every night. We heard stories from our "friends" about their children who slept through the night at six weeks of age and we were envious. We thought she had "sleep issues." She did not sleep through the night until she was fourteen months old. But she always went back to sleep when she did wake up. Sticking the binkie in her mouth, in retrospect, was a minor inconvenience.

My son... my adorable, little man. He is another story. God made him cute for a reason. And he is an undeniably gorgeous baby.

The diaper terrorist woke up at least three times a night until he was nine months old. I nursed him back to sleep but he never fell into a deep sleep. Whenever he aroused, he wanted to nurse. He slept in our bed because getting up to retreive him was so exhausting. I slept lightly because I was afraid he would fall out of the bed, and whenever I DID fall back to sleep, DT would wake up and want a cocktail from the boobie bar.

When I weaned him, he finally started sleeping through the night - if you can call it that.

For the past two months, my son woke up between 5:00 a.m. and 5:20 a.m. No matter what we tried to get him to sleep later - everything to delaying his bedtime, putting him to sleep earlier, napping him more, napping him less - he still woke up at the same time.

And we thought this was bad.

Then, this week happened. My son has a cold and has reactive airway disease. This basically means that whenever he gets sick, he has breathing difficulties (similar to asthma). He wheezes and coughs so hard that he frequently vomits (usually on me). Because of this, he takes an inhaled steroid called Pulmicort once a day, even when he is not sick. When he does get sick, he takes the Pulmicort twice a day and another drug called Xoponex up to three times a day. The Xoponex contains Albuterol, and is a "rescue" medication that is supposed to relieve symptoms within minutes. The problem is that it also causes hyperactivity.

I do believe this is why my son has woken up, rearing to go for the day, before 4:00 a.m. this past week.

Either that, or he just hates us.

I am serious.

There are many women parading around Los Angeles who have the enviable job of part-time moms (referred to herein as “PTMs”). These mommies do not work in the traditional sense and have fulltime nannies and housekeepers (or a combination thereof) who cook, clean, chauffer their children to school, take them on play dates, to the park, and extra-curricular activities, while these women talk on their cell phones, go to the gym, “do lunch,” go shopping, and run errands. Being a fulltime mom is an exhausting job and I envy these women who have been able to finagle a way to turn it into a part-time job.

Yes, I am unabashedly jealous.

Sure, the PTMs successful husbands may not be around as much as mine is. Sure, PTMs do not have the intellectual “rewards” of a real career. Many of these women do volunteer work, if they so desire. PTMs call the shots. They chose what they want to do, when they want to do it, and since they are not reliant on the almighty paycheck, they are also empowered to decide if they do not want to do anything at all besides sipping lattes and going to pilates.

Oh, what I would do for the time and money to do pilates or any type of exercise for that matter. Or to enjoy a leisurely latte. My Starbucks sessions consist of quickly gulping down liquid caffeine for a mandatory refueling of adrenaline to keep me from passing out.

Xanax will do that to you.

I want to be a PTM. I want to chose which child I can accompany with me to various activities and leave the other one at home where he can nap and stay happy by sticking to his or her normal routine. I want to spend more individual time with my kids. I want to be the one who goes on play dates or the park, if and only if I feel like it.

I want to be a PTM. I would rather not drag my two screaming kids to the supermarket and then figure out how to unload them and a cart full of groceries up a flight of stairs back into our condominium, unassisted.

I want to be a PTM. I have been warned by my husband who wants his successful wife to remain eternally employed that I would have no paid help if I did not work full-time. Instead, I am a full time employee and a part-time mom on the side. Yes, my kids have a nanny, but she is not a luxury. She is an essential caregiver for my children who knows that I need her in order for me to work. My children both have asthma and get sick if someone in the next room sneezes, so the more affordable option of daycare is simply not an option. Furthermore, my son’s heart condition and the must-be refrigerated medication he takes at precise eight hour intervals make day care a complete impossibility. I pay an arm and a leg for a nanny, the most recent of whom, after two weeks on the job, has told me she is exhausted and will no longer do “light housekeeping” as part of her job responsibilities. So I will now have to hire a once-a-week housekeeper in order to keep my full-time nanny happy. Who’s the boss? I digress.

When I get home from work and the changing of the guard with Nanny ensues, I quickly switch gears into full-time mom mode. My kids are at their worst… tired, whiny, pissed at me for being gone all day, and needing to be quickly fed, bathed and loved before they melt-down completely. This all happens before husband comes home from work. He is gone from 7:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. He misses all of the fun.

I want to be a PTM. I want quality time with my kids and I also want quality time with myself.

I need a wife.