I wake up stressed about how we drag our youngest to all of her sisters’ activities.

 
Okay, technically, I don’t wake up from the stress but when I do wake up, say around my second cup of tea, mid-morning, after my oatmeal and a hot shower of course and maybe a quick walk in this gorgeous weather, I think about Chloe and how her life experience is simply different from how it was for her older sisters.

 
I try to compensate by promising things like “treats” whenever she has to get dragged to one of their swim meets.

 
When I tally up the treats after a long weekend, it could send someone into a diabetic coma.

 
Yesterday, I promised Chloe when she arrived at the swim meet she could choose a treat from the concession stand. She had already devoured two green apple flavoured Tic-Tacs in the car. I realize this isn’t earth shattering but it all starts to add up to a large, two and a half calorie dental bill.

 
We packed her a cookie to eat mid-day as lunch dessert and I later took her to the grocery store where she knows the bakers by name and who hand her not one but TWO massive cookies because they can smell the neglect on her chocolatey fingers.

 
While she’s eating her third cookie of the day, I remind myself that her older sisters had three cookies over three years at her age, she asks me things like, “Mommy, have you signed me up for dance class yet?” and I want to turn myself into a giant cookie.

 
No, I haven’t signed you up for dance classes Chloe because we now have an activity (sometimes two) for each and every day of the week.

 
She asks, “Okay, if you haven’t done it yet, why don’t we go home and pick up my dance outfit and drive to the place?”

 
What place? What dance outfit? Does she think the tickle trunk has more than a pimp costume and bat wings? There’s just no time!

 
I’m running out of cookies.