Last night on the way home from daycare, D3 and I were talking about her time out for putting her hands around Enemie’s neck. She and Enemy go way back, and have never really been kindred spirits. It is coincidental that Enemy’s parents named her Emily, which D3 can/will not pronounce.

So anyway, last week, Enemy decided it would be funny to call D3 ketchup. The other kids laughed, and D3 got upset. I asked what happened next. D3 said Daycare Mary said, "you have to be nice to [D3]." I suggested that maybe somebody needed to get out a smacking hand. D3 immediately held up her tiny paw and said, "I got one." I told her not to use it unless Enemy was mean to her again.

Today, apparently, the two girls were standing at the window. Daycare Mary saw Enemy slap D3 and D3 left the whole slapping hand notion behind and got out the choking hands instead. Daycare Mary didn’t see what happened before the slap, and both girls were given time outs.

In the car, I asked D3 why she choked Enemy. She said, "It was from last week." I told her that you can’t hang on to things, and that she needs to start fresh every day. She told me that she would give a fresh to another of the daycare kids. I told her that everybody needs to start fresh every day. She said, "I’m not going to fresh everybody." End of discussion. I sure hope she freshes me at least.

We were on vacation last week in Daytona, which is a two-day drive for us. I can’t do more than seven or eight hours in the car with kids, so we have to make it two days. So on the way home, day one, we stopped at St. Augustine to see the lighthouse. Because
D3 was too short to climb, we found instead an ice cream shop. D3 was covered in chocolate and, because St. Augustine isn’t very user friendly to tourists, there was no water anywhere to clean her up. Not wanting to listen to her complain, as she has Herculean complaining skills, DH pulled into a McDonald’s for us. I took D3 in, washed her hands and face, and decided it was a good opportunity to go potty.

D3 must be built a little  bit oddly down under, because she always pees straight forward. We have been working since the potty training days reminding her to pee down. For some reason known only to her, she got excited mid-stream and leaned back. The force of liquid shooting out of that girl was enough to soak my thigh and stream on down to my foot in the nanosecond it took me to scream for her to stop. So I mopped up the mess, scolding all the while. I got to the point where I was helping her put her pants and shoes back on (another issue all together), and she started laughing, but trying not to, which was a first for her. She knew it wasn’t in her best interest to laugh at that moment, but she just couldn’t hold it in. That probably kept me from killing her.

So I dragged her  back to the car, strapped her in, and got into the passenger’s seat. I then announced, because I knew the big girls were curious as to why I was in such a foul mood, that D3 had pissed on my foot. D1 and D2 burst into laughter as they told D3 how lucky she was to still be among the living. So true.

Fast forward about three hours, and D3 was playing with one of her dolls. She has a tendency to talk nonstop, and was driving all of us a little nuts. She told me that her baby was having trouble being good. Remembering all too well our pee incident, coupled with her incessant chatter, I told her that I knew how she felt because I had a baby like that too. She looked at me with a very adult, you can confide in me face and said, "Is it D2?"

D1 at that point yelled, "No, you idiot, it’s YOU!" To which D3 replied, "But I am being so good."

Skip to the next morning.

We were stopped in North Georgia at an IHOP having a late breakfast. Before we left, I took D3 to the restroom. There was a one holer and a handicrapper, so we waited for the mom with two kids to leave the big stall. They had done some major business, and as we stepped into the space (while they were still washing their hands), D3 yelled, "Oh, nasty! What did they do in here?"  I was slightly embarrassed at this incident, but decided that the other mom probably understood and was glad it wasn’t one of her kids. While I was helping D3 put her pants back on, she told me she wanted to show me what she could do when we got outside. I don’t know what happened, perhaps it was the previous day in the car, but I made a rookie mistake and said okay. I did, of course, assume she meant outside the restaurant. I was so wrong. We got into the middle of the very full restaurant and D3 stopped, bent down and put her hands on the floor, stuck one leg straight into the air, then proceeded to do a forward roll. Horrified, I asked her what she was doing? She informed me that she was doing a cartwheel. D2, laughing hysterically, said, "D3, you’re my hero!"

And they wonder why we don’t vacation more often.

D3 was playing in the tubby this morning while I worked nearby, keeping an eye on her. She asked me to run and get her "sfatula" from the mess we call her toys. I don't know why a girl would need a spatula in the tubby, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.