2:15 – Tell Annalie we’re leaving for the doctor’s in one minute. Realize she hadn’t brushed her hair yet, ask her to do so. Find granola bars and stash them in bag for later.

2:18 – Leave for base hospital. Drive should take 25 minutes in normal traffic.

3:08 – After finding a parking space, putting up sunshade in futile attempt to keep interior temperature of the minivan from reaching 100F, jogging across parking lot and into hospital, and taking elevator up three floors, arrive eight minutes late for 3:00 appointment.

3:20 – Go with nurse to get weight, blood pressure, etc. Back to waiting room to read books to Annalie.

3:42 – Finally called back to see doctor. Same friendly nurse shows us to exam room and promises doctor will be there shortly. Ask if I have time to pee first, am assured that I do.

3:45 – After returning to exam room, nurse peeks her head in door, apologetically explains that the doctor wants to do a urine dip*, and asks if I have any pee left in me at all. Magical pregnancy superpower #8: always being able to pee, even if you just went three minutes ago.

*Up to this point, the doctor had never wanted to do that particular test. I’d asked at every previous visit before using the restroom. Of course this is the one visit I didn’t ask first.

3:50 – Doctor comes in, introduces himself* to me and Annalie. Measures my belly, listens to baby’s heartbeat, asks a few questions. Assures me everything looks good, says they’ll see me in four weeks.

*I had to reschedule an appointment, and my regular OB was unavailable.

4:00 – Check waiting area in pharmacy. Doesn’t look too bad. Decide to take number in order to ask question about refilling prescription. Only seven more people before number is called. Man, it’s hot in here. Air-conditioning seems to be on the fritz. Yes, Annalie, I’m hot too. Yes, I know you’re hungry. Here, have a granola bar, and hang in there. It will be our turn soon.

4:05 – Half the pharmacy windows close. Line moves much more slowly. Annalie amuses self and people sitting nearby with old cell phone that can still take photos. She takes photos of Red Cross sign, her feet, pattern on my shirt, slip of paper with number on it.

4:55 – Number finally comes up. Prescription filled quickly and with minimum fuss. Yay! Head out to minivan.

5:00 – Leave parking lot. Wonder how long it will take to drive mile to base gate at this time of day. Share second granola bar with Annalie. Drive s-l-o-w-l-y towards gate with rest of people leaving base.

5:15 – Drive out gate and onto highway.

5:30 – Find non-fast-food restaurant to eat dinner and wait out worst of rush-hour traffic. Annalie is tired and hungry and falling totally apart because she wanted fast food with a playland. And her shoes hurt. And she wants to go home so she can swim. I explain getting home right now would take at least an hour at this time of day. Might as well eat dinner first. She allows herself to be dragged into restaurant, where she loads her plate at salad bar with broccoli, peas, garbanzo beans, black olives, chopped ham, and grapes. She cheerfully devours it all, plus seconds of ham and grapes.

6:05 – Driving out of restaurant parking lot, I spot Payless Shoesource in adjacent strip mall and suggest we kill more time there. Annalie immediately agrees; she loves trying on shoes.

6:20 – Nothing we wanted to buy at shoe store, so we stroll down mall to TJ Maxx, where we find no children’s shoes but lots of cute outfits for Baby, Annalie, and Aurora. Annalie looks at toys while I narrow down pile to one clearance item each for Baby and Aurora; one clearance skirt and one clearance swimsuit* for Annalie. Before we pay, Annalie shows me a toy and asks if she can get it. I say no, not unless you get rid of five toys you already have at home. She sighs and returns toy to shelf without further argument. I make mental note to remember that comeback.

*Annalie has suddenly outgrown all her tank swimsuits from last year, even though they fit her at the beginning of summer. I think she’s grown another inch in the past month.

6:40 – One last stop at Walgreens to look for cheap flip-flops for Annalie. Instead find cheap fake Crocs. Also find candy bars on sale and pick up half-dozen, planning to eat one on drive home, save rest for later. Go stand in line at register.

6:55 – Still standing in line, which now has seven people in it. Long line for a drugstore. Someone announces cosmetics counter open, whole line shuffles over there to pay. Leave store, walking past same woman at original register, still arguing with manager.

7:00 – At last, driving home. Traffic is still heavy but moving briskly. Take slightly different route home to avoid construction delays. Spot no fewer than five vehicles driving along with left turn signals blinking steadily away despite no apparent desire to turn or merge. Wonder if it was Leave Your Left Turn Signal On Day or something.

7:25 – Arrive home. Whew.

Can you tell how hot and sweaty I was when I took this photo? We just bought a new inflatable pool at Target that we thought was similar to the big green round pool we had last summer in San Diego. Well, we were wrong.

This one doesn’t have a bench in it, it doesn’t have nifty cupholders in the sides, and worst of all IT DOESN’T HAVE A DRAIN IN THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL. How ridiculous is that!? To empty the 3-day-old cruddy water I had to stand on the side, balancing very precariously, so the gross water and dead bugs and leaves and grass could flow out over my feet. It was far too heavy for me to pick up and dump without ripping the plastic till it was nearly empty, which I only realized after struggling with the half-empty pool for several minutes. Hence me being hot and sweaty and annoyed. And in this photo you can’t even see my rolled-up splashed-with-gross-water pants.

At least Annalie had fun swimming once it was emptied, rinsed, and refilled! Now I’m wondering why I didn’t just put on my swimsuit and join her.

This was another shot I rejected because I felt it did not accurately portray the level of my annoyance.

This isn’t really related to my 7 Days shot at all, except that I was standing on the deck when I took it. I just thought I’d share how unbalanced our deck looks right now.

See that big tree on the left, the one that hangs over part of our deck and house? It’s been dead for a couple of years, and we were told that it would be cut down soon after we moved in. Well, the guy who does maintenance on our rental house is a general contractor and a friend of the owners. He does good work, but he does it on his schedule. He told us a couple of weeks ago that he would be by “on Thursday” to cut down the dead tree. We moved our deck furniture and container garden over to the other side of the deck so they wouldn’t get inadvertently crushed. Apparently something came up, because no one ever showed up to cut the tree, and we have not heard from the maintenance guy. But we don’t want to move all our stuff back because the minute we do he’ll show up and we’ll have to move it all back.

Hey, wait…maybe we should move our stuff back, and then he’d show up to get rid of the tree.

We’ve had a rather rough few days around here. It hasn’t been all bad, we’ve had plenty of storytelling and tickling and other pleasant interactions. But we’ve also had way more than our usual share of time-outs and dicussions about why it’s not okay to disobey your mother, or to speak rudely, or to throw books, or to hit. We’ve talked about how it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to say, “I’m really angry about this,” but it’s not okay to lose your temper and take your anger out on the people around you.

I don’t think there’s any particular reason Annalie has been testing limits lately. She’s been eating and sleeping normally. Our routine is settling back down after travels and houseguests and sickness, so that’s probably part of it. I think it’s mostly just one of those things that kids do from time to time, checking to see if all the rules are still the same. Or maybe God thought I hadn’t been challenged enough lately. Who knows.

In any case, today was Annalie’s half-birthday—that is, the day she turned 5 1/2. My piano teacher’s family used to celebrate half-birthdays with half a cake, just for fun. Troy and I have celebrated each other’s half-birthdays a few times over the years (mine is 9/11, which has a whole new meaning the past eight years), when we’ve been apart on our actual birthdays. Today I decided to surprise Annalie with a half-cake because I thought we could use a fun surprise.

I tried to be sneaky about it. When I was in the kitchen cleaning up and Annalie was upstairs drawing and watching Cyberchase, I whipped up a small one-layer lemon cake as quietly as I could. I didn’t use my big stand mixer because I figured Annalie might hear it. While it was baking, I went back upstairs and played a game of UNO with Annalie, then went back downstairs to take out the trash and recycling, and take the cake out of the oven and make some frosting.

I discovered I could not make the frosting without using the stand mixer. Sure enough, within two seconds of turning it on, I heard Annalie jump off the couch and come clattering downstairs. I flicked the mixer off, met Annalie in the kitchen doorway and said, “You can’t come in! It’s a surprise for you and it’s not ready yet.”

Annalie grinned and asked, “Is it cake? It smells like lemon cake!”

“It’s a surprise, that’s all I’m saying. Can you please stay upstairs for a few more minutes? And not try to sneak into the kitchen? I really want it to be a fun surprise,” I answered.

Annalie, still grinning, replied, “Okay, Mama! I won’t try to sneak down, I promise.” Then, true to her word, she went back upstairs and stayed put till I was done assembling and frosting the cake. I was quite proud of her for that.

When I went upstairs to tell her she could come down and see her surprise, she fairly flew down the stairs, then giggled with delight when she saw the cake. I asked her if she knew why I made her half a cake. She didn’t, so I told her that today was her half-birthday, that today she was officially 5 1/2 years old. She laughed, then ran to get plates and forks.

We put candles in the cake, I sang to her, we took a photo for Troy, and she blew out her candles. We had tall glasses of milk and lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting for dinner. Annalie smiled and chattered nonstop the whole time, and gave me about 17 hugs and kisses while we were eating and talking about the fact that now she’s closer to being six than she is to five.

After dinner we turned on the Christmas lights still strung on our house and in the lemon tree, and went outside to play a game Annalie invented, called “Look, Gramaw sent me a care package!” Annalie put a bunch of stuffed animals and her Halloween candy in a big box, wrote “Gramaw” for the return address and scribbled fake cursive lines for the delivery address, and set it outside the sliding glass door. Then we came inside and went back outside, pretending to be surprised by the big box on the patio. Annalie spent a good 15 minutes exclaiming over the box’s contents and naming each of her “new” stuffed animals. She put the candy back in her Halloween pumpkin, saying she didn’t want any candy right then, since she’d just eaten cake. Very sensible of her, I thought.

Right before bedtime, Annalie almost lost it because she wanted to take a shower upstairs, not downstairs. I’d already switched from a bath to a shower because she insisted that she’d told me she wanted a shower (even though she had told me she wanted a bath), and didn’t feel like switching bathrooms. I told her that she could have a shower upstairs tomorrow, but tonight we were staying downstairs. Oh, the drama. Then she yelled at me because I grabbed the wrong cupcake pajamas from her dresser, she wanted the shorts ones, not the stupid long pants ones! Cue me counting to ten under my breath and saying a prayer for patience.

Compared to the defiance I’ve been dealing with in the past few days, this evening was actually pretty mild. I stayed calm and offered Annalie the choice between downstairs shower or going to bed early, and she backed down, grumbling, and even offered an apology for yelling at me. After her shower we were talking about the fact that when a grown-up says, “This is what we’re doing,” it’s not okay for a kid to yell just because they don’t like what the grown-up said. I asked Annalie why she thought she’d been having so much trouble controlling her temper the last few days, and she shook her head and said, “I just don’t know, Mom! It’s a mystery.”

Maybe it’s just because she’s 5 1/2 now. Life does get more complicated as you get older. I won’t make the mistake of thinking that a 5 1/2-year-old can’t be troubled or worried. I remember being 5 1/2, and in my experience childhood was not all gumdrops and roses. I guess all Troy and I can do is love her, teach her, guide her, give her as much freedom as we safely can, and surprise her with the occasional half-birthday cake.