It is a nasty, grey, rainy day.

Which suits my current mood perfectly. Penny was off-and-on fussy all weekend. She would only eat tiny portions, even from a bottle, which meant she was sort of low-grade hungry-fussy more often than not. After more than a week of sleeping through the night, she woke up at 2am both Friday night and last night. She was easily bored and not easily distracted all weekend.

I wanted desperately a few times to just put Baby Einstein in and let that entertain her, but Matt heard a report on NPR about babies and television and ADHD and has decided that we should not have the TV on when she's around.

At least she was mostly okay at my parents' last night.

She was fairly good this morning, too, until I tried to put clothes on her. Then, apparently, she discovered that the adorable new overalls that Matt's mom and sister sent as an Easter present are lined with red-hot needles, because the instant I pulled it over her head, she started screaming.

And then she continued to be whiny and fussy for the rest of the morning. Taking breaks only to spit up on me, and then be furiously angry when I stopped reading to her to clean myself up.

I was ready to give her to the gypsies. Or, at least, I was absurdly grateful that today is Monday and she's going to be daycare's problem for most of the day.

And then, of course, I felt guilty for wanting to be rid of her. Bad, evil, unworthy mommy that I am.

(Have I mentioned that I'm glad I'm not a stay-at-home mom? Yeah. I'd have gone clinically insane right around the 4th month.)

You don't care about nasty, grey moods. Let's just skip right to the adorable pictures, shall we?

Make no mistake - fussbudget or not, Penny was super adorable in her Easter dress. And Sam had this singing duck hand-puppet that enthralled her. I took a ton of pictures, many of which will turn up on the photo album before the day is through.

But here's a preview.

Penny's Easter outfit, courtesy of Miss Charita from school. Positively the most precious thing she's ever worn.

Aunt Sam's singing duck made Penny the Happiest, Giggliest, Most Excited Baby EVER. Why I didn't take a movie, I don't know.

"What could that be in Grandad's pocket? A toy? For me?"

Matt and Penny and I haven't all been in a picture together since Christmas, so I asked my brother to snap a few of us. Believe it or not, it's entirely by coincidence that we're all wearing blue. I'd actually intended to wear my purple dress, but couldn't find the shirt that goes with it.

Matt and I went off our diets yesterday. A deviation we've been planning for weeks.

We probably ate about 5 candy bars' worth of chocolate. Each. And a handful of jelly beans.

We had Chinese food for lunch, but I don't think my egg drop soup or the beef-and-broccoli was too far off the diet, since the rice was over-fried and I didn't have more than a few forkfuls. Matt's (breaded/fried) General Tso's was a little further off the mark, of course.

Dinner was glorious, though. I had potatoes. I had seconds on the potatoes. I had two lovely hot rolls. And lemon chess pie (that turned out perfectly, thankyouverymuch) for dessert.

Are all the carbs and sugar to blame for the bad mood and the sore throat I have this morning? Could be, I suppose. I know that my weight spiked by a good pound and a half, after it had finally started dropping again.

But it still kind of hurt to put out the "Leftover Easter Candy - Help Yourself!" sign in the office kitchen this morning.

But thanks to K.T. and Kevin's thoughtfulness, we have some low-carb candy (chocolate and jelly beans both) to munch on while we wean ourselves back off the sugar high.

--Liz