Why do I torture myself like this?

So Saturday is Cole's birthday. He's turning 3! Rey and I have decided to start a new birthday tradition for the kids. Now that there's three of them, it gets harder and harder for them to feel "special" and have special time with one of us. So on their birthdays, one of us will take him or her out to breakfast. We tried to start it back in October for Mason's 4th birthday, but Rey was still commuting back and forth from Key West and wasn't here in Naples on the morning of Mason's birthday. So that was failure to launch.

Well, all systems are "Go" for Cole's birthday. We still hadn't settled on who was going to take him. Rey was asking me last night who was taking him and I said, "Well, I really want to take him, but I feel like you should get to be the one to take him." Rey said he feels the same way--he wants to but thinks I should get the chance.

It ended with me saying that I'll ask Cole who he wants to take him--after all it doesn't matter what WE want because this little adventure is all about him. And I KNOW Cole will pick Daddy. So what ask the boy you ask? Why not just concede the breakfast trip to Rey? I can only assume I like to torture myself...

ME: Cole, you get to go to breakfast on your birthday all by yourself with Mommy or with Daddy. Who do you....

COLE: interrupting (we must work on the kid's interrupting habit) Daddy.

ME: thinking to self Man he didn't even let me finish my question, I didn't stand a chance.

COLE: Daddy to take me for pancakes.

ME: You don't want to go with mommy?

COLE: Nope. Daddy.

ME: Alrighty then.

He's three (or almost). I don't fault him, Daddy is at work from sunup to sundown, and when he walks through the door you'd think it was Jesus himself. I get it. It was like having the kid choose between brownies and broccoli.

Daddy = New and Shiny.

Mommy = Old and Dull.

P.S. We countdown to special days by "wakeups" -- i.e., there's 10 wakeups to Christmas, 4 wakeups until school starts again after summer break, etc. I told Cole today that it's two wakeups until his birthday. He just came and announced to me, "Mommy, the clock says it's my birthday today. No more wakeups left. The clock say it."