On the road again

I had a few hours to myself this morning since I overnighted in Cincinnati for an afternoon presentation. I used the time to study Hebrew and write this blog post about how my brief love affair with Twitter has fizzled. Minutes after I filed the post, it was up and picked up for syndication. Look for it this week in a small town newspaper near you.

As any mom who travels for work can tell you, the guilt over being gone is tempered by the comfort of having a hotel bed all to yourself and enjoying a shower and a cup of coffee without having to wipe anyone's butt or dispense Cheerios and juice.

Still, I felt a little extra guilt this morning when I rolled out from under 6 pillows and a goose down duvet to this email from Josh:

I woke up to the pitter patter of little feet. Zoe hops into bed - "scared" - and I lean over to the clock to see how much time I have left. It's only 12:05! So I tell Zoe it's too early for the big bed and tuck her back into her bed, where she goes back to sleep. I go to the bathroom and then back to bed. I'm woken up by the sound of Ada chanting "Mommy, up," which escalates until she's yelling for either of us. I check the clock: 12:25! I go in to her room, pat her, and put her down for bed. She screams for another ten minutes, then at 12:40 or I so I go in there to put her to bed again. She's tossed all the stuff out of her crib, but I re-pacify her and put her to bed. She screams again until 1:15, at which point I relent and take her to the big bed. She squirms and kicks on my chest until 2:00, so I give up, frustrated, and put her back in her crib. She screams until close to 3:00, when I grab her and take her to the big bed again. This time she and I fall asleep, and the only reason I know that is that somewhere around 5:30 she falls out of bed and wakes me up crying. She's fine, but Zoe rushes in to see what happens, hops in the big bed, and we all "rest" until 6:30, when we all get up.