August 12, 1999

When Zoe was a tiny baby she slept in a small cradle next to our bed. Since she has always been a wiggler we made sure she was always dressed warmly for bed. Sister #1 sent an incredible assortment beautiful, snugly cotton onsies with feet from Marks & Spencers. So, Zoe spent her first year in nothing but the finest.

As she got bigger she wiggled more. She moved out of a cradle in our room to a crib in her own room. It was much colder than our bedroom. We switched to blanket sleepers-- one piece pajamas, usually of heavy-ish fleecy material. On extremely cold nights we would put cotton leggings and a t-shirt under the blanket sleeper and she was sure to be pure toast through the whole night. As anyone who has tried to keep a toddler under covers for the whole night knows, this is impossible.

This was fine with her until about two months ago.

Now my daughter refuses to sleep in what anyone would consider conventional pajamas.

Usually she's happy to go to bed in a t-shirt and pull-ups. Well, at least that's what we put her to bed in.

Zoe has discovered the freedom of dressing herself. So, what she goes to bed in is not necessarily what she's going to wake up in.

I've come in and found her asleep in a dress, tights and a sweatshirt, shorts and no shirt, a shirt and no pull-up, and more than several times in my leopard chiffon scarf (which now permanently resides in her bedroom). The latest and by far oddest happened Tuesday night. I came home and found her asleep in a bikini.

Chuck had warned me that she was sleeping in her bikini, with a pull-up underneath. I don't know why I assumed it was just the bottoms, with perhaps a t-shirt on top. When I checked on her I discovered that in fact it was the whole bikini--top and bottom.

I was fine with this. The problem started about two hours later though.

As always she came into my room to sleep with us. At this point I discovered no pull-up under her bikini, but panties. She then told me that the pull-up had (mysteriously) gotten wet so she took it off and put on panties.

Her nighttime dryness is still unreliable and there was no way she was going to sleep in my bed, on my mattress, on my sheets without a pull-up.

"No momma, it (the bikini bottom) needs to be next to my 'gina."

The discussion went round and round. I will not go into details but she ended up wearing a pull-up, panties, and the bikini bottom (and top) to sleep in my bed.

We're nothing, if not flexible around here.

In other news, I called my councilman's office today to move forward on my speedbumps. I was referred to a person in the Department of Transportation who works on the speedbump project. The aide in his office also said she'd talk to someone at LAPD about getting a cop with a radar gun out here to at least ticket some of these speed demons.

I then called the number at the DoT, left a voicemail and expected the worst.

Imagine my surprise when about an hour later I got a phone call from Mr. Speedbumps himself. They're sending me out a package which details the criteria for qualifying for speedbumps. Apparently if more than 5000 cars per day drive on your street you can't get speedbumps, so that put the kibosh on my plan to absolutely litter Sepulveda Blvd. with them but it won't be a problem with my street. If we qualify I just have to send a request, in writing, to his office and they'll send me the petition and the rest of the paperwork.

So far this is all going too smoothly.

Until next time. . .