When I became a parent, I never saw myself becoming one of those parents who talks about the hardships from my own childhood. You know the stories: "When I was a kid we had to walk two miles to school. In the snow. With no winter coat! You kids should consider yourselves lucky to have transportation!" Well, first of all, we hardly lived anywhere that got that much snow, and secondly we always had buses. So I never considered what I would possibly tell my own kids that would be hard for them to imagine. Maybe lack of cell phones? I suppose, but they're not old enough to care about those yet. Then last weekend when we went away I realized what it was that is so much better now: the thing that they take for granted that we parents had to suffer through—the way they watch TV. My girls never have to wait for a show to be on. They can watch whatever show whenever they want, for the most part. The only thing keeping them from doing so is me. They have no idea how good they have it, and, in turn, how bad or good it is for me. Last weekend, when we were at the hotel, we decided to take it a bit easy. Even though we wanted to get to the beach, we weren't going to wake up early and rush to get there. The girls, however, woke up early, and I decided to put something on for them to watch so I could go back to bed. Immediately, Lana yelled, "I want to watch Mickey!" "There's no Mickey here, Lana," I told her. "Why?" she asked. "Because you can only watch whatever shows are on TV right now. Nothing is recorded here." They all looked at me like I had five heads. What on earth could I be talking about? They could always watch whatever they wanted whenever, as long as I agreed. As far as they could tell, I was agreeing. What was the problem? I proceeded to find the kid-friendly channels and give them three options: PBS, HBO Family, or Disney Channel. They agreed on a show that was on at the time, and I went to lie back down. It was only 6:45—for crying out loud! After the show was over, they called for me to come put something else on.

I had one of those mornings where I thought, "Really? So this is how the day is going to go?" There wasn't one story that stood out, just a bunch of little things: the girls waking up at 6:15 a.m. when they hadn't gone to sleep until almost 8:45 the night before. Thanks, babysitter! Then I lost the little bag filled with Sonya's Box Tops for the school fundraiser. They were on the counter one minute and gone the next. Sonya also couldn't find her watch, which she insisted I had put somewhere, but for the life of me I don't remember doing that. She got a rubber band very tangled in her hair. I came this close to cutting the rubber band, her hair, or both. Both the hair incident and not finding the watch led to tears, mostly because she's so tired. Some of those tears stuck around as she walked out the door to school. Andy assured me she had calmed down by the time he dropped her off, but I'm pretty sure her day is going to include at least one more meltdown. The little girls were a bit neglected while I was dealing with getting Sonya out of the house. They had finished their breakfast and wanted down, but I had hair to untangle so they would have to wait. Lana got herself down, but GG was strapped in and decided to show her unhappiness by throwing fruit all over the floor. They also had gymnastics and nobody wanted to get their leotard on, mostly Lana. After wrestling with her for a few minutes, I finally put her in time out to calm down — and to calm me down. Unfortunately, this meant we arrived at gymnastics fifteen minutes late. So yeah. Good morning! I felt like Alexander in the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. My only comfort is that it's Friday and we have a fairly low-key weekend. And since it's Friday, I will allow myself some wine this evening. Or perhaps this afternoon. When is it too early to start drinking? Lost and Found update: I found the baggie full of box tops; they had somehow ended up in one of the kitchen drawers. Sonya's watch — I suddenly remembered her taking it off. Kristi: About a month ago, I decided it would be a nice idea if just the five of us went away for the weekend. I know we went on vacation when my in-laws were here, but I wanted to do something with just our little family. I looked online and found a Marriott hotel in Newport Beach at a low price. My dad works for Marriott, so we get discounts at all Marriott hotels. You have to find the right time and the right hotel; I can't always get his rate, but most of the time I can. When I can, it's really cheap. He's never allowed to stop working there.