So, I got snagged.

"Mama, can you stay with me a little while?'' Maria asked as I tucked her in.

"No, honey. Mami has to work. I'll come check on you later.''

"You are always working.''

Oh.my.goodness. She stopped me cold. But, I think I had been waiting for it.

In the first decade of our marriage, my journalist husband traveled a lot. Sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time and usually for enviable reasons like Olympic games and Wimbledon matches. I used those long absences to do things I didn't do when he was home -- like eat cereal for dinner and spend Friday nights after work in the Y hot tub.

And while the missing him could get bad, I mostly enjoyed the freedom, reading late into the night and hogging the bed.

My husband rarely travels for work anymore, a blessed fact considering we have a 5-year-old who badly misses her father when he is gone. This week though, Daddy hasn't been home for a few days. The only benefit Maria sees in this is that she gets to sleep in the big bed with me.

"Whenever Daddy is not here, I get to sleep with you, right?'' she said when he left.

There is no option to say no.

There's a popular old TV skit that goes "I'm crushing your head, I'm crushing your head.''

The guy, known as Head Crusher, puts two fingers up to his eyes and envisions the object's head between fingers and CRUSH.

Is it wrong to admit I thought of the skit often this week?

It was Spring Break. Spring Break is not for the weak and poorly planned. In other words, not for me.

Maria reached into the hamper and grabbed a pair of stockings.

"You wore them yesterday. They're dirty. Pick something else,'' I said.

She grabbed a clean pair without argument. Surprise. Surprise.

But, no more than 30 minutes later, we're in the car on the drive to school: "Mama, why did you tell me I couldn't wear the stockings from yesterday, but you have the same clothes on you wore yesterday?''

Snagged again by the Little Litigator.

So, I just got wind Dora the Explorer is about to become a pre-pubescent, or rather "a Tween'' -- the demographic that makes marketers drool and mothers bang their heads.

We have loved Dora. When Maria was 3 and refusing to speak Spanish, I purposely turned on the Dora videos and celebrated Dora's Hispanic heritage, bilingualism and adventurous spirit. I did the same with Diego, who I actually like better because he doesn't have that high voice or suffer from constant catastrophes. Diego even became Maria's invisible friend for a good long while. "Come on, Diego!'' she would say as she ran circles around the living room, looking behind her at a child only she could see.