First post-vacation shower this morning (last shower was post jacuzzi, exfoliation, massage and twenty five minute bonus SCALP massage at the Spa Grande):

Goodbye enormous walk-in resort shower (en suite, no less!)
Goodbye luxury resort bath products that smell like Hawaiian sunset (ok, I stole some of those, so it's only goodbye until I locate them in my suitcase).
Goodbye amazing ocean view from every room of the condo.
Goodbye breakfast on the lanai every morning.

Ah, but also
Goodbye first day sunburn, thanks for hanging in there for the entire six days.
Goodbye five hours of airplane "lap child" snack cup Chex detritus.
Goodbye un-babyproofed stairs, kitchen cabinets, pool, ocean, etc.
Goodbye twenty minutes per day of sunscreen application, child chasing, tears, and negotiations.

But mostly
Goodbye my-own-bed to which I would gladly return for another three hours, if only I didn't have to go back to work.

To paraphrase and basically steal from my BFF Beth: "Whoever coined the term Terrible Twos hadn't gotten to age three yet"

Zoe is generally a really fun person to be around. Since I got back from my 10 day business trip she occasionally even busts out with an unsolicited "I love you Mommy" which melts my heart. But then there are those moments that melt my dwindling thread of patience, culminating last night in me throwing her into her room, slamming the door and letting her sit there crying (real tears) for about 15 minutes. Let me give you some background:

Here is the list of things that have brought Zoe to tears (when I say tears, I mean whiiiiiining, mooooooaaaannnnning, walking-around-repeating-her-request-50-times type of crying) in the last 5 days:
--We couldn't eat at Estella's house (the night I came home)
--Estella couldn't eat lunch at our house (the next day)
--Estella couldn't eat dinner with us (the second night I was home), starting to see a pattern here?
--There is no orange juice
--We have no bagels
--We have no cream cheese (ok, maybe it's time to shop), but we DO have cereal, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bacon, oatmeal, etc.
--(after we buy cream cheese) we have no STRAWBERRY cream cheese
--She doesn't want to go to school
--She doesn't want to go home
--She can't have a yogurt pop (because she already had dessert, AND because it turns out we don't have any)
--We can't make yogurt pops (no time before bedtime, and we don't have the yogurt, FINE, we'll go to the store someday, sheesh, get off my back supermoms!)

I'm sure there are more, but they aren't coming to me right now.

The frustrating thing is that most of the time these are not arbitrary rules (or even justified rules) that we are imposing, most of the time these are just truths: Estella isn't home, we literally have no orange juice, yogurt pops won't have time to freeze before you go to bed, etc. Yet she will beg, and please, and whine, and repeat her request for what feels like hours, but may actually be 5 or 10 full minutes! At least when she was two, you could usually distract her out of a tantrum, but no matter how logical the answer is, if she doesn't like it, she breaks out the tear factory.

So, what pushed me over the edge last night? I picked Zoe and Josie up from school yesterday and Zoe told me she was thirsty. My response: "we'll get some water when we get home." Meanwhile, the much beloved Estella is gleefully socking back a bright yellow cup of water right in her face, thanks E. I gather up my baby, her dirty bottles, jackets, shoes, school calendar, etc and head for the door, when I am informed by Zoe that she is too thirsty to walk home. I am not exaggerating when I say that our front door is 39 feet from the front door of the school. So I brush that comment off and attempt to cajole her out the door. She decides to take a stand on this issue and plants herself in the doorway of the school at the top of about 6 cement stairs. I'm holding a 25 pound baby on a busy city street, so I don't have a free hand or the confidence to drag her out without her falling and cracking her head open. The teacher and I manage to scootch her far enough out that they can close the door and go on with their lives, but she refuses to move any farther, because she is too thirsty. I tell her that the tears are just going to make her more thirsty, and that I don't have any water with me. I try the "I'm leaving without you" move, but she calls my bluff and just stands there. And in reality, I can't just leave her there, even 39 feet from our front door. It's a city, and she's 3.

After asking, demanding, joking, yelling, and abandoning don't work, I ring our doorbell, yell at Jed to come grab the baby and I storm back, pick her up (crying, did I mention that?), stomp home, up the stairs, into her room and dump her on the bed. I whip her shoes off of her, grab her minkee (pacifier/blankey combo, her beloved soothing object), yell "No Minkee" like a lunatic and slam the door. She proceeds to cry (loudly) the entire time I prepare dinner, although after 15 minutes, when I come in to tell her that her favorite dinner (quesadilla and beans) is ready, the waterworks go off like a switch. When I ask her if she knows why I punished her, she says no (love that!), so we have a little chat and we move on to dinner. Where she proceeded to down about a pint of water.

I guess she was thirsty.

"I love you"

OK, maybe she's not really saying it, but it has been independently verified by 3 adults. Earlier this week, I dropped her off at daycare and as I was walking out I said "I love you" and she repeated something like "ah wob ya". The teacher heard it too and swears she said I love you. The next day Jed dropped her off at school and said "I love you" and heard it parroted back at him. It's official. Done. Blogged. She is a genius. Or a parrot.

"Uh-Oh"

This morning she got up and was copying her mother and repeated Uh-Oh about 50 times. We weren't going to count this as a word, since we figured she had no idea what it meant, and was just copying us.

But this evening she was actually using it correctly, playing with Zoe and Dad and when she would drop somthing, or something fell on the floor, we got "Uh-Oh!".

Done. Written down. Blogged.

(Coincidently, her sister's first "word" was "Hi Dog", also two syllables)

New pics from December and January...

Playing Memory tonight (you know, that matching game with the square cardboard picture cards?), Zoe was not doing so well, and I hate to brag, but Jed and I were doing GREAT! Jed started getting a bunch of matches in a row and the following conversation ensued:

Me: "uh oh, Daddy's cleaning up"

Daddy: "woo hoo, I'm beating a 3 year old at a preschooler's game" (or something to that effect, I may be paraphrasing)

Me: "Daddy, you're being mean"

Zoe: "Daddy, you're punching me in the butt"

It took a beat, but I figured out that she meant that he was "kicking her butt" which is a phrase I just recently shouted out in another game earlier this weekend.

The moral of the story is that if Mommy were better at watching her potty mouth, we wouldn't have gems like "punching me in the butt" to laugh at and become a long standing family inside joke. Blerg.

Zoe, Josie and I went to the library last week. Chasing a toddler around trying to keep her from digesting the books while simultaneously being asked to read to three year old Zoe was a challenge but these are the times that can pay off hysterical rewards.

Scene: Mommy and Zoe sitting at dwarf-sized table

Zoe: Read this book, Mommy
Me: Zoe, that's a baby book
Josie: umrmph (chewing corner of book)
Zoe: READ IT!!!
Me: OK (opens book which contains one picture and two words per page)...Cheese...Queso...Yellow...Amarillo
Zoe: (shoving book to the side with disdain) Stop. I don't like French.

Awesome!

Then she proceeded to select 4 Halloween themed books (yes, it is January, and yes, I pointed out to her that these are Halloween books and might even be too scary for her). Zoe stood on the stool at the auto-check-out kiosk and slid the card and books under the scanner all by herself. Mommy juggled 5 books and Josie (swallowed by her enormous parka), and herded Zoe to the car. As we dropped the books between the car seats, Zoe said "Mommy, we have to go back and return this book, it's scary". To which I replied: GET IN THE CAR! and we headed home.

She has read those halloween books every night since. Oh, and it turned out that the one about the Ugly Pumpkin is actually a Thanksgiving book, also totally appropriate for early January.

That is a common blog entry for me, huh? Well, I had a big disk failure and decided to upgrade. Then I forgot to install php5-mysql. I know, WTF is php5-mysql? It makes this thing work.

We'll have Dec/Holiday pics up soon.

Taking a break from children and going to Vegas is not the smartest idea. I got less sleep there than I usually do at home! The good news is that Josie didn't start walking while I was away, but she did learn how to pull herself up to standing by using the dog to stabilize her. Jed found her standing up with one hand on the dog in the middle of the room, so we have to assume that she pulled up on Kai to get there. She also clapped her hands for me this morning! AND she tried to stand up by herself this morning. She climbed up on my leg and then let go to stand up, but I spooked her because I got too excited about it and she wouldn't try again. Maybe she will be walking by Thanksgiving!

Anyway, I'm home. Very tired, and so is poor Jed who did great with the kids (although he spent most of the weekend with our neighbors, but whatever it takes to get through was ok with me).

Quick summary of Vegas: I love my Mother-in-Law, thanks so much to Gail for the trip!!! My sisters-in-law are pretty cool too, so sorry Monica couldn't make it. Hotel was great, didn't lose too much money gambling, saw Elton John's show (incredible), didn't sleep enough, ate too much.

Advice to all: DO NOT GO TO VEGAS IN THE NEXT 6 MONTHS! They've closed one runway at the airport, I had an hour delay flying out and a 2 hour delay flying home, and we were lucky, they were projecting 3+ hour delays! Drive or stay home until they finish the airport construction!

OK, back to work!

...while discussing the election, I told some friends that in spite of how much integrity I thought he had, in spite of how he approached issues with thoughtfulness and intelligence, I didn't think the US would elect a black man or a woman president.

I am very, very proud that my country has proved me wrong. And I am proud that my daughters will never see a black president on a TV show and give it a second thought.