Ugh.

I am so exhausted, and ready to have Tim home with me. Ellie has slept like crap this week, including several nights where I spent more than an hour trying to get her back to sleep. And then she's up before 7, demanding that we play, and whining nonstop about this and that (mostly Elmo. While I love the half hour of shower time Elmo gets me in the morning, I am ready to break our freaking TV so that she'll stop whining for that Muppet every waking hour.) Last night and this morning has been especially rotten, and so I am having one of those days where I doubt my fitness as a parent, let alone a stay at home parent. Thank goodness I am not married to someone who is out of town on the regular. I think I would have to just put E for adoption and go ride the rails as a hobo, because I am not cut out for this shit. Especially not while pregnant and hormonally insane.

We did have a really nice time visiting him on Wednesday. We got to LA in the early evening, and had enough time to shop at Ackerman - I bought her a new sweatshirt, and she insisted on wearing it, even though it's a few sizes too big and it was 80 degrees out. She claimed she was cold! Then we went to Drake Stadium to listen to the band practice. She was a pretty cute little girl, listening to the music, having some snacks, and then pacing around the track.

The thrill of her life was when the band split into groups and the drummers walked by us - one of the girls let her bang on a bass drum. That was of course, followed shortly by the REAL thrill of her life, which was seeing her daddy again. She informed him several times (as she'd been repeating to me for a good half hour) that she didn't like the Bruin. She liked her daddy. (We are going through a phase where bears, sharks and cookie monster freak her out, and she will say repeatedly, that she doesn't like them. Also, the frog. No like Biscuit and the Frog.)

We took her out to dinner at the pizza place where Tim and I had our first date. It was a total hit, even though Tim and I couldn't sit at our favorite date table. Boat anchor baby! I was feeding her some yogurt towards the end and she started pretending like she didn't want any more, and I told her she could get a cookie if she finished her yogurt. She crammed those last few bites in incredibly fast, and then said "is cookie time now for me!"

After devouring her cookie and milk (and getting so excited that she threw up a little bit of milk, like a sorority girl) we went back to Tim's hotel where her daddy was able to give her a bath. Then I combed the snarls out of her hair while she stood against the hotel room window and yelled to the cars on the 405 ("oh, come back car! Look at all the cars!") She fell asleep in the car and then let me roll her into bed around 9:30. All in all, a successful day.

Not like today, boo.

UCLA class of 2029.