Tomorrow we're going to Washington State, and on a plane. When I told this to Chebbles over dinner tonight, she said, "Mama, you said it wrong. You said we're going on a plane. We're going on a TRAIN."

"No, Chebs, we're going to take a plane. It's faster that way," I said, and left it at that.

Not long after her prediction that our plane would "go too fast and go under a mountain," we found ourselves at a gumball machine. I asked her, "What color gumball are we going to get?"

"Yellow."

It came out blue. So we're going to Washington.

One major reason for going to Washington is so that I don't wring Chebbles' beautiful little neck. The regression she's exhibited -- acting like a baby -- ALL THE TIME -- has gotten so old. It's bad enough that I'm caring for a real baby, and that Hub-D and I are both suffering from something I'll call Stomach Flu Lite, but to have a two-and-a-half-year-old crapping on the floor is just TOO MUCH.

I'm hoping that contact with her beloved older cousins will innoculate her against too many more babyish outbursts. The whining alone is driving a spike through the side of my sleepless head.

In other news, as soon as we ALL got to sleep last night -- around, oh 5:30am, after Chebbles had been given her new cup of milk and then screamed for a half-hour for MAMA to come in her ROOM and hold her HAND. And after Baby V had woken up hollering and I shoved Hub-D out of his warm marital bed so that she could sleep with me instead. And after we'd all finally settled down -- and Baby V had stopped flailing and kicking my still-tender gut incision, THAT's when Prince and Otto brought the LIVE MOLE into the bedroom.

It's impressive that Prince (you might remember he's the one that killed the chicken) made it through the bathroom window with a live mole. But I wasn't inclined to be impressed when I heard the odd clicking noise coming from my bedroom closet at 5:30am.

Have you ever heard a mole saying, "Holy crap! Two cats are trying to kill me!" from beneath your shoe collection? It sounds like a bunch of panicky Aborigines.

So I sat upright in bed, covered Baby V's ear with my hand and SCREAMED for Hub-D (which is my wont in these situations). Shockingly, he did not respond to my distress calls. So instead, I crept into the guest room where he had only recently fallen asleep.

"Sweetie, I am SO SORRY to wake you up."

"Whu-- Whuu--t is it?"

"The cats are killing a mole in our bedroom."

"Can't you just close the bedroom door and come in here and let them finish it off?"

"NO!!! Oh my GOD!!!"

So he slowly, slowly rose from the bed, armed himself with the broom and headed into our bedroom. Several minutes of mysterious sounds followed.

"OK, the mole has a good head start outside," he said as he left the room. "If you want to guarantee its survival, that's up to you, but I'm going back to bed."

If you suspect that none of us got any more sleep after that incident, you would be correct. Baby V was sufficiently roused to resume her incision-kicking restlessness, and Chebbles was awake shortly thereafter. I took the baby and lay in Chebbles' big girl bed with her, moaning and feeling sorry for myself, for the baby, and for the mole, who may at that moment have been shuffling off this mortal coil.