Whither willpower?

I'm so weak. You remember all that stuff I wrote about in my last post? Yeah, so last night we drove back from our Labor Day weekend late to miss the traffic. We'd had a lovely weekend but not a brilliant one for sleep - someone had a dicky tum and kept waking herself up with farts quite extraordinary for one so small (I'm not talking about myself here, by the way).

As we pulled up outside our Park Slope pad around midnight, little Dot's eyes pinged open. She clocked where she was. She grinned. She squealed 'Daddy!', then 'meow!', 'woof!' and 'door!' (presumably in anticipation of the riches she knew awaited her within - she LOVES this apartment and its treasure trove of dogs, cats and doors) and finally 'mummy mummy mummy UP!'.

So I took her upstairs and went about getting her to bed. I tried the dim lighting, the boob trick, lullabies, walking, the lot. She was having none of it. I sat her on the floor for two seconds while I went to the loo and she was off like a shot, trying to climb on the sofa, getting reaccquainted with all the birthday pressies she'd opened on Friday, flinging books gleefully on the floor and flirting happily with the baby in the mirror ('baby! baby!'). Cute for about five minutes. Less cute two hours later at twenty to two on a work night. I finally wrangled her down after a bit of protest around 1.45.

This morning, bleary and puffy, I stumbled to work. Exiting the subway I passed my favourite coffee shop. I was running late. I was knackered. The reusable cup was on the 14th floor. I checked no one was looking then nipped into the coffee shop and ordered a skim cappuccino in a double paper cup and a sandwich in a cellophane wrapper.

Before leaving the shop I did a furtive double-check to ensure no one was looking and made a dash for my office, trying vainly to conceal the evidence of my hypocrisy. I don't think anyone saw.

I shut the door and downed the cappuccino while waiting for the pediatrician to call me back about the nappy sitch.

Oh dear. Only yesterday I was mulling a post about the long-lost virtue of self-control and rediscovering the satisfaction of delayed gratification. Well, so much for that. Went out the window around six this morning along with what remained of my sanity.

I'm pleased to report though that the coffee seems to have done the trick.