East coast here we come!

Preparing for Battle- er, Travel

We are hopefully under a cease-fire in our household (Battle: Parents vs 3 Year Old) for the duration of the trip to Florida. Each day lately brings a series of fights with Ellery as she is apparently skipping years 3 through 12 and moving straight to the turbulent teens.
Fight 1: Go to the bathroom when you get up (response: "NO!!").

Fight 2: You may watch 1 cartoon before school (response: "MAH-AHM!!").

Fight 3: I made you eggs for breakfast (response: "I wanted yogurt!" "I wanted cereal!" "I wanted (whatever Mom/Dad did not make!")- you get the picture.

Fight 4: Let's get your shoes on (response: "I don't want these shoes/socks/clothes/etc".

And so on....You have to visualize that these situations occur all in the span of about 20 minutes, are accompanied by screaming, stomping, and often throwing of whatever is close at hand, and are so predictably repetitive that Scott and I feel as though we are banging our heads against a wall when we try to curb them. And those are just the morning ones- the evening dinner/bath/bedtime is not fit for this blog, because I can't describe it without a litany of four-letter words.

So, in a nutshell, I am super excited to get on a plane and sit in close proximity to the whirling dervish of a child that Scott currently refers to as "La Diabla". I am hoping that traveling with her aunt Lubelle and cousin Ruby will help, and maybe we will get lucky and sit next to an oblivious teenager who spends the entire flight plugged into an i-whatever and doesn't notice that his row-mate is lobbing half-chewed goldfish crackers at her mother and infant sister.

We love her, so dearly, and she is an amazing and creative and intelligent child. And we cannot wait to hand her over to her grandparents.

Oh, and Merritt is good.

Waffle Sunday

FFF

Forced Family Fun! Our first hike as a foursome- see how excited Ellery is! Not really a flattering shot of any of us (I think my eyes are closed), but Ell did actually have a good time. She was certainly in her element, as she is an avid collector of sticks and rocks, so there were fine specimens at Mt. Talbert for her to gather. She is the only kid at school who has a cubby full of dried up leaf bits and small stones from the city streets (the teachers ask that she leave the larger sticks outside, so there is also a pile of her treasures by the door to the school). It was a nice walk, 2 miles being about what it takes to get our rambunctious 3 year old to nap.