We made the mistake last night of explaining our frenzied behavior last night to our daughter like this: “Tomorrow, do-do? See grandma, grandpa, uncle tj, and aunt melanie! Tomorrow, 3-of-us go!”

Bad idea.

See, the problem with Leah is if you get her excited, she’ll do anything she can to help you along.

CK was vacuuming so we’d have a clean house when we got home; she stood behind him “helping him hold the cord” (translation: unplugging the vacuum).

I was frantically trying to finish the most boring British lit paper on Earth; she snuck up when I was looking at my notes and commandeered the mouse (translation: really pissin’ me off. God bless whoever invented autosave).

So we finally get her in bed and make mistake number 2: We tell her that when she wakes up, we’ll go see grandma-grandpa-uncle-aunt! Yayyy!!! Now, good night, sweet dreams, mwah, mwah.

We paid for that at 11 pm when we woke and found her sitting on the foot of our bed, staring at us.

Now, when you take into account last night’s thunderstorm and the fact that in certain moments Leah bears a startling resemblance to Chucky the demon puppet, you realize that this was a pretty freaky moment.

We convince her to lie down, and I fall asleep.

Next thing I know, Fernando is waking me up in his usual place between my legs (6:30 am on a Saturday *groans*), but then I realize that Fernando is unusually big. I look down, and Leah’s lying there, playing quietly. She sees my eyes open, grins, and does it all over again: “Go! Go! all-3-us go! grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, go! Yes!”

During the typing of this blog, Leah has interrupted me no less than four times, either to help her get dressed, repeat her lovely “Go! Go!” chant, or to tell me to go take a shower (3 years old and she’s already this uppity? Oy).

It’s a six-hour ride. O help us persevere, lords of the road trip…