Just keep swimming...

Tomorrow, my firstborn turns four years old. It's so hard for me to process in some ways -- I still remember her babyhood so clearly -- but at the same time, when I watch my spunky little kid motoring around on her tricycle in the driveway hollering, "Faster, faster!" or listen to her animatedly narrating her day to her daddy I feel a little disoriented. How is this even possible? How is this beautiful little firecracker mine, and where did she come from? How did we get to this point?

And then I look at her baby brother, who is such a completely different child but who also sometimes looks so much like Suzannah did as a baby, if a bit fatter, and my head, it spins.

I had just enough quiet time this afternoon to write in Suzannah's journal, the book I started three years ago today, on the night before her first birthday. Isaac was napping and Suzannah was reading quietly in her room (she has now completely given up napping, although she is fairly cooperative about still having "quiet time" -- so why, why doesn't she sleep any more at night?) and I used that time to write her Birthday Letter. When I started writing in this journal, I managed to do it monthly. Over the past year or so, though, between pregnancy and adding another baby to our family, I mostly just try to write when I can, and lately her letters come every few months. This is just the way it is, juggling two children, and there's no point in beating myself up for it -- someday, when she reads this (I have no idea when this will be, but I'm thinking far, far into the future), I can't believe she will really be all that distressed that there is a letter for February and a letter for May but nothing for March or April the year she was three.

I go back and forth debating how much of that journal to share here. I think I've shared a couple of her birthday letters, but part of me wants to keep her journal between us; it feels a little too intimate to share with the world right now. It's not so much that I'm writing anything I wouldn't write about here, but some things, I think, should be just hers.

I was so thankful for the afternoon quiet today. These moments seem so desperately fleeting lately. As we near lunchtime each day, I begin to plan the ways in which I will maximize my use of naptime. I'll write, or I'll read, or I'll catch up on e-mail, or I'll get the kitchen floor scrubbed, or I'll finish the laundry. In the weeks following Isaac's birth, I was fortunate in that my children fell into a pretty beautiful rhythm of sleeping at the same time for at least a little while, and I usually had one good hour each afternoon. It doesn't seem like much, but that hour was everything. It meant the possibility of a nap, or a clean bathroom, or some uninterrupted writing. Now, though, I can no longer take that quiet time for granted -- Suzannah gets there eventually, but it doesn't always coincide with Isaac's sleep. Sometimes I scrawl a few lines here and there, in the spaces between my children's needs. Sometimes I just power through the day to accomplish what I can. Sometimes I just sit, sometimes I don't really know what I do, because it's like once I have that time, I don't really remember how to use it.

And that, I suppose, is just the season of life that we're in right now. It's teaching me patience, maybe. It's teaching me to notice things when I can, in the quiet spaces between bursts of activity and chaos. It's teaching me how little control I have. And that might actually be a good thing, although it doesn't stop me from struggling with it.

My little girl entered the world on her own terms, almost four weeks early. It's so interesting to me, the ways in which my children's births reflect who they are and who they're becoming -- obviously, I notice this more with Suzannah since I've had more time with her, but I know that as Isaac reveals himself to us over time this will become clearer in ways I can't clearly see right now. We weren't ready, but she was, and we just -- had to dive in and keep up.

Or, as she often sings to me these days, "Just keep swimmin'. Just keep swimmin'." We're going through another Finding Nemo phase in a big way, which is funny because we don't watch the movie much -- but these days she is Nemo, and I am Dory, and Matt is Marlin, and Isaac is Baby Nemo Isaac. Other people in our lives (Aaron and Morgan, Kyanne, etc.) are turtles or sharks.

Just keep swimmin'. What do we do? We swim.

Or she'll look at us after we've warned her about something -- like shimmying up on the seat of the exercise bike, or hurling herself off the couch because she wants to "slide," or jumping from the stools at the kitchen counter, so confident one of us will catch her whether we're ready or not -- and she'll say, "That's what I do." Indeed.

On one hand, she's a fairly cautious child. She doesn't warm up instantly to strangers. She's not inherently outgoing. She still wants and needs the security of Daddy sitting with her during Sunday School -- sometimes on his lap. But once she's made you her person, once she's connected with you enough to be comfortable, enough to be silly, enough to tease, she becomes wildly gleeful and affectionate. Once she's mastered something at the playground, she throws herself at it with such carefree abandon. In January, when I began walking to the playground with the kids on sunny days, Suzannah was shy about climbing up to the top of the big slide. She slid down with her legs hugging the sides, slowing her movement. At the mall play area, she's always let herself be a little bulldozed by bigger, wilder kids. But now that I've always got her brother on me I can't quite follow her everywhere she wants to go, so she's had to learn how to hold her own among the older kids. If she wants to play up in the treehouse at REI, she has to go it alone -- I can't very well crawl up there and follow her across the little bridge and down the slide with an infant strapped to me. And there was a turning point in the last couple of months when she just decided to go for it. She spent some time at the top, shrinking back into a corner as children much older and larger flew past, but I couldn't go up after her; she couldn't slide down in the safety of my arms. She made that leap herself, and the grin on her face as she came shooting out at the bottom made me so. proud.

She does just fine at the mall play area now. She does just fine at the playground. She'll run around and laugh and holler with kids she doesn't know, and she'll climb to the top of a slide, or hoist herself up on a swing, and she'll cry, "Mommy! Look at me!"

This afternoon she rode her tricycle in the driveway. She pedals hard ("Faster, faster!") and just before she reaches the street, she turns (all by herself, now, and without slowing down at all) and heads back to the garage, grinning, shrieking. And then the inevitable happened; she didn't look where she was going and pedaled too close to the basketball hoop. The back wheels on her trike caught the base and she toppled over, skinning her elbow and her knee, landing on her hand.

She picked herself up, brushed her hands on her pants. I waited, not rushing over to soothe in case she didn't need it, knowing that my reaction could mean the difference between dissolving in tears and shaking it off.

"Whoops!" I said cheerfully. "You okay, Bug?"

"Mommy, can you kiss it, please?" she asked, her voice quavering. She held out her hand. And I kissed her palm, kissed her elbow, kissed her knee through the fabric of her pants.

"All better?"

"Thank you, Mommy," she said.

"Want to take a little break, Kiddo?"

"Nope," she replied. "Can we please try it again?"

And in that instant I was absolutely overcome by everything contained in those words. Because every single day, I have to try again. Because this motherhood thing is hard, hard in ways I never could have imagined four years ago. Because sometimes -- often -- my heart feels like the emotional equivalent of her skinned knees and elbows. Sometimes I don't want to get back on the tricycle; I want to go inside and sink to my knees and cry and quit. I want someone to kiss it all away, but instead I have to take a deep breath and remember that I set the tone for my home, for our day, and I have to let go of the morning's tantrums and yesterday's battles and start fresh. Sometimes I have to ask for forgiveness from my daughter when I fall short, when I lose my temper, when I am so far from the mother I want to be, and those are, perhaps, among the most humbling moments I'll ever experience.

So we try again, and we keep swimming.

And I'm just so filled with gratitude for the chance to swim with this child.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl. I'm so glad I get to be your mother.

Oh, boy

I thought I "learned" very quickly after I had a son that I had to approach diaper changes a little differently. I mean, any baby will surprise you with a sneaky pee, but a boy! They can do some impressive things.

That said, Isaac hasn't pulled a sneaky pee on me in a long time. I've gotten careless, because my boy loves to be naked SO MUCH. And I love to let him, because what can possibly be any better than a fat, jolly, naked baby laughing and rolling and grabbing his feet and going, "I'm a baby! It's awesome to be a baby!" (Well, he's basically saying that, if not in so many words. I mean, it's pretty obvious.)

So I was changing him tonight, getting him ready for bed. I turned around just long enough to reach for a diaper, and when I turned back again he was totally peeing straight into his own face.

And he looked mighty surprised.

These ordinary days...

I'm in a remarkably good mood, all things considered.

I'd planned only a few things for today, such as taking a nap with Isaac after church and going to the gym later. After lunch, I changed and nursed the baby and planned to lie down with him during Suzannah's daily quiet time. Matt cleaned up the kitchen and started the dishwasher. And then we heard the most horrible sounds coming from the kitchen -- popping and grinding and something that sounded vaguely like sparks. Coming from the dishwasher. I also thought I smelled something burning.

I ran into the kitchen and found my husband gaping at the dishwasher. "Turn it off!" I cried. That snapped him out of his little trance long enough for him to do that, and then we both just stood there gaping for a moment.

"Well," I said. "I guess we need a new one."

This is not unexpected, as it was one of the appliances that came with the house. It's old, it's hardly fancy, it's not terribly attractive. It worked, though, and we had no intentions of replacing it until we had to. Well, obviously, that day was TODAY. (And seriously, no, it's not worth fixing. I don't even know if it can be fixed. It has sounded horrible for a long time, although I secretly love our noisy dishwasher -- it's like cozy white noise for me, and I love lying down in the next room and pulling a blanket up around me and drifting off to sleep with the dishwasher running in the background. But today it didn't just sound horrible, it sounded like FIERY DISHWASHER DEATH RAGE.)

Anyway, we bought a new one. It's nice, I guess. I was almost surprised at how utterly un-opinionated I was about it. Matt wanted an efficient one that didn't use too much energy or water. I wanted stainless steel, and I said nylon dish racks might be nice (although I don't know if our dishes are so fancy that we have to worry about any new dishwasher scratching them up). But mostly I said, "Whatever you think is best is cool," and then I chatted with a couple of sales associates who noticed my fat, happy baby and wanted to make faces at him and talk about their own grandbabies. And also, suddenly I really just wanted a latte, so I was much more interested in that.

Then we went to Trader Joe's and the car battery died. That was also due, I guess, and it's not a big tragedy, except that it was a bit of an inconvenience to try to get someone to give us a jump. We have jumper cables, but we sat there for awhile before anyone came out to the parking lot. Matt asked a guy who just mumbled something about not wanting to mess up his car, and I was like, COME ON, CAN'T YOU SEE THE WIFE AND BABIES OVER HERE? Whatever. Finally, a security officer wandered over and offered right away to go get his car to give us a jump, which restored my faith in nice people a tiny bit.

And then we came home and washed all of our dirty dishes by hand and I started on supper. We're going to have to wash everything by hand for a few days until our new dishwasher is delivered, but I'm trying not to feel sorry for myself since I've lived without one before -- and also, I don't really mind washing dishes.

Somewhere in there we gave Suzannah a bath, which I started and Matt finished. I was halfway through scrubbing one of the pans in the kitchen sink when I heard Suzannah sobbing in the bathroom -- well, not even sobbing, but wailing hysterically, incoherently, because she had gotten the band-aid on her pinky finger wet. She loves her band-aids, like many children do, and this one is for a LEGITIMATE INJURY (something like a tiny paper-cut on her finger). Also, it's not like band-aids are REPLACEABLE or anything.

It took awhile to get everyone calmed down after that. I'm tired. I've been tired for days, but each night, I seem to be too stupid to go to bed at a decent hour even when I can. Right now it's after 10:30 and all I can think about is how appealing my bed is, but also, I can't turn off my brain because Suzannah's fourth birthday is on Friday and Isaac's baptism is one week from today and family starts arriving in a few days and there is just so, so much to do even though we've all agreed that we want to keep things relatively simple.

(And also, four years. My baby girl. She is four. I have so many things to write about this, but I cannot begin to cram that into the same entry in which I write about a dishwasher and a car battery.)

"I guess this was kind of an 'off' Sunday," Matt said a little while ago. He seemed apologetic, although of course none of it was his fault. It was just these little things that interfered with the ordinary little plans we make -- a nap, the gym, a timely dinner, a reasonable bedtime. But strangely enough, I haven't felt particularly bothered by any of it today. In a way, it was almost nice, although I can't say why. I just felt so content to just let the day happen, to just shrug and say, "Okay, then, this is what's happening -- and let's get some coffee." To just be with my family, wherever we were, even if Suzannah was restless and Isaac was tired because he missed his nap. Even if Matt and I ate our dinner standing up in the kitchen tonight. It was an ordinary, unexpected blessing -- just to be totally content, to not want to be anywhere else, or need anything else. To just appreciate, I guess, being exactly where I am, whatever that looks like.

Spring Cleaning

Somehow, I've managed to make it through four years of parenthood without having to do a full day's worth of Vomit Laundry. Today, I feel like I've finally been initiated into the Inner Circles.

I have friends whose children throw up when they get a little sick, even if they're not really that sick. Suzannah has never been like that. In fact, I think the last time she really threw up she was under a year old. She runs fevers quite easily, but she's not a puker. Until last night. Last night she was awake for several hours, throwing up on every single spare sheet and blanket we had in the house, not to mention all of her pajamas. She'd fall asleep and we'd think, okay, she's done. But then she'd wake herself up by throwing up again. (Matt did manage to catch some of it in a trash can, but the poor girl just seemed so confused; I imagine it must be kind of a scary sensation for someone who has never really thrown up before.) By seven o'clock this morning, she was sleeping on the afghan from the back of the old green couch in the study and wearing old purple sweats.

I wanted to cry, because it was a beautiful day here, warm and sunny, and I canceled Very Fun Plans (photoshoot with the kids at the beach, with our favorite doula and wonderful friend!) to stay home and run twelve hundred loads of Vomit Laundry. But because I am such a sunny, positive person, I have managed to put a good spin (SPIN! HAHA!) on something as icky as Vomit Laundry, namely that all of these blankets we have lying around the house, and all the spare sheets and towels, could really use a good spring laundering anyway. And after I coaxed Suzannah into the tub this morning, I scrubbed that, too. By tonight, I thought, this house is going to be so clean!

(Don't worry, guys, sometimes I annoy myself, too.)

My mom remarked that we're pretty lucky to have made it so long without one of these puke-filled days. My biggest fear right now is that Matt and I will contract this little bug ourselves, and I spent a bit of time today remembering this completely horrible night three years ago, otherwise known as The Worst Night Of Our Lives, in which just such a thing happened. Suzannah had had a bit of a tummy bug for a day or two -- not the puking kind, the other kind -- but I didn't think much about it, since Matt and I felt fine. One night, I made a batch of stuffed peppers for dinner. Matt sent me a message before he left work that evening, something along the lines of, "I'm not sure I'm going to be up for eating much, I'm feeling a little off." In Matt's world, "feeling a little off" apparently translates to "having to pull over and vomit on one's shoes by the side of the road before making it home from work." He wasn't in great shape when he walked through the door.

Matt went to bed and I ate a serving of peppers myself, still feeling fine. I nursed Suzannah, still feeling fine. I begain to change her diaper and then, mid-change, felt very suddenly NOT AT ALL FINE. I managed to stagger into the bedroom, hand her off to my groggy, nauseated husband, and proceeded to spend the next twelve hours losing the rest of my pregnancy weight.

Matt and I still talk about that night. We each have a very distinct memory of sitting in the family room at three o'clock in the morning, sipping ginger ale. I was nursing the baby and trying not to die. He was...I don't know, just sipping ginger ale. We both agreed that that ginger ale was the best thing we had ever tasted, and also, that life totally and completely sucked at that moment. (The baby, by the way, was wide awake and happy and expected entertainment and snuggles and all sorts of unreasonable things, which is probably partly why we think of this night as The Worst Night Of Our Lives.)

Here is a fundamental difference between Matt and me, though. The next day, I laid alone in the guest room (I did not want anyone near me or touching me or breathing on me, and also, since I'd been getting out of bed roughly every twenty minutes to crawl to the bathroom, I thought it was rather polite of me to not disturb my husband's rest), thought about dying, and came to the conclusion that I didn't much care whether I died or not. I sipped ginger ale. Sometime in the late afternoon, I think I nibbled some crackers. I must have nursed the baby. I hope I interacted with her.

Matt mostly took care of Suzannah. And around our normal dinnertime he said, "So, I think I'm just gonna microwave the peppers from last night. You probably don't want any, right? Should I just make them for me?"

"You are NOT going to microwave those peppers."

"They actually sound pretty good."

"OH MY GOD, THROW THEM AWAY."

"I'm not throwing them away! It's perfectly good food!"

"Fine, microwave the peppers. But I should tell you that I am not coming out of this room until you have scrubbed every inch of the kitchen with Pine Sol and eradicated every last smell of stuffed peppers, and also, you're in charge of the baby until then."

And then I slammed the door. And the man ate the peppers, because Winslows don't waste food. (He did, however, clean up the kitchen quite nicely.)

I haven't cooked nor eaten a stuffed pepper in three years now. This makes my husband very sad.

Anyway, I remembered this story today because I had plans of trying out this new recipe for tuna noodle casserole -- simple and full of vegetables and something I could easily make from food we already have around the house. But after about the seventeenth load of Vomit Laundry, I sent Matt this message:

Um, so maybe I won't make the tuna casserole tonight.

He wrote back, I know exactly what you're thinking.

I mean, I wasn't sure whether my slight queasiness was due to washing Vomit Laundry all day long, combined with not much rest from the night before, or whether it was due to something a little more sinister. Either way, I wasn't taking any chances, because I don't want to have to not eat tuna, or vegetables, or spiral pasta, for the next three years.

We had pancakes instead. And so far, we all feel fine. Wish us luck.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers in my life!

To name just a few:

My own mother -- for showing me how to be a mother, for laughing with me, for loving with me when I'm probably not all that loveable (it's hard to believe, but I have my moments), for all the long talks, for her wisdom, for giving me boosts of confidence when I need it most, for always being in my corner, for believing in me when I don't believe in myself, for being my friend, for being a good sport, for loving my children so deeply.

My mother-in-law -- for raising a man who treats women well and loves me so well, for raising a man who became the best partner and father I could ask for, for welcoming me into her family with open arms, for her generosity, for her encouragement, for her thoughtfulness, and for being such a loving grandma.

(My children are so lucky to have grandmothers who connect with them and love them so well even from a distance; even though we don't see either of you often enough, you are such important presences in my children's lives. And Suzannah talks about you both all the time.)

My doula, Patti Ramos, and midwife, Nancy Spencer -- for "mothering" me throughout my pregnancy and labor, and for helping to make my journey into motherhood such an empowering, beautiful, loving experience.

My mother friends, who are such an important part of my life, who offer their support, their laughter, their camaraderie, their stories, their understanding, and their friendship. If I had a few extra arms and a few extra hours, I would write to each one of you, but since I'm writing this with a three-year-old bouncing around my keyboard and we're about ready to do bedtime, please just know that I deeply, deeply appreciate you. If we've ever met for coffee, if we've ever had play dates, if we've texted each other, if we've sent Facebook messages or e-mails in moments of desperation, if we've commiserated, if we've shared birth stories, if we've swapped tips -- it's all kept me a little saner than I might otherwise be.

And to everyone who has loved my children, whether you have children or not, you should know that that is the best way you could ever love me. If you've been important in the lives of my children, you are so important to me, and on this Mother's Day, this mama is grateful to you.

Six Five days on the road and I'm a-gonna make it home tonight...

Last night, just west of Ellensburg, I turned to my husband and said, "Remember when we could just hop out of the car at a gas station and pee really quick and get back on the road? Or even pull through a coffee stand? Or grab some food? And be back on the interstate in like fifteen minutes?"

We both laughed rather maniacally.

It was past 8:30 and our "quick" dinner stop had taken two hours. Granted, we did choose to eat a real, sit-down meal at this little Thai restaurant we discovered years ago (oh, childless youth!) but Thai food is generally pretty quick; it was at least as fast as a meal at a diner would have been. It's just that each time we stop for anything on our trips between Washington and Montana or Minnesota, the following things need to happen:

We need to fill the car with gas.
We need to convince our daughter to pee.
We need to change Isaac's diaper.
I need to nurse Isaac.
We need to somehow juggle our children so that we can also pee.
We need to find coffee or get food. Or both. Often both.
And it's a really good idea if we can let our daughter run around a bit.

When we were carefree young things without babies, we could accomplish most or all of these things in one stop. We'd fill up the car, we'd dash inside to pee, we'd be back in the road in no time. We might get coffee at a drive-thru, but if we don't get out of the car, does it count as a stop? We'd generally allow ourselves one "real" meal in a long day of driving, as in one that doesn't come in a paper bag handed over a counter, but we didn't lose much time there, either. And if we decided to take time, it was a peaceful luxury, a break in the driving, a chance to stretch our legs and eat a leisurely dinner. (Leisurely dinner = one in which we don't have to worry about kids' menus, or whether or not we have sufficient tools with which to entertain our children during the time between ordering our food and receiving it. One in which we are both allowed to remain seated for the duration of the dinner. One in which we actually get to talk to each other and finish most of our sentences.)

Now, we need to make a few more stops. 1. Gas. 2. Someplace with food or coffee. 3. Someplace with Good Bathrooms (translation: a place to change diapers that isn't the floor, and a toilet that is sufficiently clean enough for my daughter to use, as she is extremely picky about such things and also obviously hasn't mastered squatting. Because she is three, and also short). I can nurse Isaac just about anywhere, but that can take anywhere between one and fifteen minutes. If my children were perfectly programmed robots, I would nurse Isaac while Matt helped Suzannah use the potty, or Matt would change Isaac while Suzannah and I used the bathroom, and then Matt would supervise a few minutes of Running Around Time while I nursed the baby, and then I'd get both children buckled into the car while he managed to use the bathroom, and is this complicated enough yet? Because sometimes Suzannah insists that Mommy take her to the potty and change the baby, and if Mommy has to do both of those things we lose a few minutes, because Mommy doesn't have six arms. And we could just say, in our We Are Not Messing Around voices, "Suzannah? Daddy is changing Isaac this time, so you are going to have to deal." But then we would lose time anyway, because our daughter would be boneless on the floor. Also, we have to allow extra time for things like convincing our daughter to take off her pink slippers and put on her sneakers so we can walk across the muddy parking lot in the rain, and sometimes that conversation takes awhile. And we could just physically take off her slippers and put her sneakers on, I suppose, but then there's that "boneless on the floor" thing again, and that usually comes with sobbing, by the way.

(I should probably call this entry "Birth Control.")

Now, we have to make Very Important Decisions like, do we go for the "quick" stop in Couer d'Alene at the Hotel With Nice Bathrooms and Comfortable Lobby, or do we stop at the Spokane Valley Mall and eat at the food court and wander around and let Suzannah play in the kids' play area and then gas up the car, a stop that will cost us in time but will possibly make the part where we have to be in the car for another six hours a bit more manageable?

My dad predicted we'd arrive home sometime around 10:00 last night. He has the uncanny ability to predict within a few minutes the exact time we'll arrive anywhere, even taking into account stops for gas and food and whatever else, and really, we were on target to arrive home then. But our "whatever else" is two children, and also, we drove through plenty of snow this weekend, including a storm on Snoqualmie Pass last night. (Uh, universe? I know I said I missed snow, but I said that at CHRISTMAS and it is now MAY.) We pulled into our driveway sometime past eleven.

Overall, it was a good trip -- if a bit frenetic -- and I'm glad we did it. We introduced my grandma to her great-grandson on her eightieth birthday, introduced both of our children to my aunts and uncles who have never even met Suzannah, ate a lot of wonderful food, drove through many of the landscapes that have shaped my life, visited a couple of my favorite people, and, oh yes, we had our FIRST DATE ALONE TOGETHER since before Isaac was born when my parents took both of their grandchildren off our grateful hands and shooed us out the door for a few hours. (See the part above about "Leisurely Dinners." In this case it was dinner, and wine, and dessert, and cocktails, and an hour of cozy reading and drinking coffee at one of our favorite coffee shops. I can't even put into words how wonderful that felt. And that four-hour recharge was also exactly the amount of time it took to make me very eager to get back home to my babies, who, incidentally, were angels for Grandpa and Grandma. It must have gone well, at any rate, since Suzannah spent the first ten hours of our trip home yesterday saying, "I don't wanna go home. I wanna go back to Grandpa and Grandma's first.")

It was also Isaac's first road trip, which he weathered quite well. We were supposed to make it all the way to Havre, Montana on Thursday, but we ended up stopping for the night in Helena, three-and-a-half hours short of our destination. It's hard for me to admit defeat like that, but when I called my dad at nine o'clock and said, "We're stopping for food, and it's snowing, and we're exhausted, and we'll probably get there at like two in the morning BUT THAT'S FINE, DON'T WORRY ABOUT US," he said, "You might consider stopping for the night right now. Then you could get a good night's rest and just come up here in the morning." We checked into the Holiday Inn Express about five seconds later. It was a good decision. We'd been on the road since 7:30 that morning and we were just SO DONE, especially Isaac, who had a really hard time spending so much time in his carseat and not on Mama, except for a few nursing/cuddling breaks. Each time I went to get him out of the car his little face would just explode with joy, and each time I had to buckle him back in he looked so sad and confused and also like maybe I didn't actually know what I was doing.

Suzannah slept for a total of, oh, ninety minutes in the car between Thursday morning and Monday night. Ninety minutes in about ten million hours of driving. She was mostly great, though; she had lots of books and toys, and even though whoever wasn't driving had to constantly reach this or that for her, or position the bag a certain way, or retrieve whatever she'd dropped, she remained in pretty good spirits. And when she wasn't, frankly, I understood. Actually, we all slept really well each night, which is more important than sleeping in the car. I'd been worried about this, since a.) we never really know how hotel stays will go, and b.) she seemed to be under the impression than I would be sleeping with her at Grandma and Grandpa's house, in my old bed. Which I did last summer, and which was awkward with my big pregnant belly, and which was not a real practical possibility when you add her nursing, co-sleeping baby brother into the mix. My parents graciously offered their room to us, and they have the most amazingly comfortable king-sized bed I've ever slept in, so I thought -- hey, worst-case scenario, we ALL sleep in that bed. (Matt actually had the nerve to say to Suzannah, "Oh, you want Mommy to sleep with you? Is Daddy going to have to sleep all by himself?" And I was like, NICE TRY, BUSTER.)

I feel like I spend a great deal of time and energy preparing myself for worst-case scenarios. This might make me slightly crazier than I need to be, but I've decided it is very smart, too, because! I'm either right, or I'm pleasantly surprised. We spent our first two nights on the road in hotels -- rooms with two queen-sized beds -- and Suzannah slept contentedly, all night long and by herself, in one of the beds while Matt and I slept with Isaac cocooned between us in the other. On the third and fourth nights, she slept contentedly, all night long and by herself, in my old bedroom across the hall from my parents' room, where Matt and Isaac and I also slept contentedly and all night long. Four nights in a row of good sleep? On the road? In slightly unpredictable circumstances? I HEREBY DECLARE THE ENTIRE TRIP A SUCCESS.