My kids have evidently entered the stage of siblinghood that everyone must go through – non-stop bickering. Everything Sam says to Kate mortally wounds her, and everything she says to him is “mean.”

They are driving me crazy.

Today’s most memorable argument was when Sam allegedly told Kate she would never be in a movie. I say allegedly, because really? He’s three. But oh my goodness, it crushed her hopes and dreams of stardom.

I should get up off the couch and go downstairs to retrieve the book I bought with good intentions but never read – “Siblings without Rivalry” – but I’d rather get feedback from you all.

How have you survived your kids’ constant bickering?

So today was not my favorite day on record. I seem to be having a lot of those lately – it must be so much fun to read my posts! Maybe that’s why google analytics said we’ve had zero readers since about Thanksgiving. And here I thought that site wasn’t working or something.

ANYWAY. Today.

The day got off to a splendid start when Andy woke me up by saying “Someone’s puking.” That someone ended up being Kate, who threw up twice before the alarm was set to go off. Yay. It was my turn to staff the sick bay so I made the 10,000 calls it requires to arrange for me, Kate and Sam to be out for the day and stayed home. Except we couldn’t exactly stay home, because today was also the one day a month that the cleaning lady was scheduled to come. We canceled her last visit here due to Kate puking last month, and I wasn’t about to do it again. My shower and kitchen floor were begging me not to. So we had to leave the house for a quick five hours.

Here’s where things really went down the tubes.

I needed to go to CVS and to run some things to Andy at school. One of the things he needed was money, and unfortunately I misplaced my debit card a couple weeks ago, which made getting cash challenging. I had a flash from my childhood and remembered that back in the olden days, people used to write checks to “cash” and get money from the bank. So, I wrote such a check for $100 and loaded up the kids and a bunch of junk in the car. We went to CVS and then headed to the bank, but when we got there, the check was nowhere to be found. I was still able to get money using a withdrawl slip (duh), so I dropped off all the junk to Andy and headed to my grandma’s (see again, homeless nomads on a sick day). She and I both scoured my car for the missing check. Not there. I scoured the CVS parking lot. Not there. It was nowhere, and there was nothing to do but wait to see if $100 would magically vanish from our checking account.

Then I decided it would be prudent to check with the pediatrician about Kate’s situation. To be honest, what I really wanted to find out was if it was ok to send her to school after these random incidents because juggling days off (especially when she seems FINE) is getting old. However when I told the nurse “My daughter has been vomiting semi-regularly since December 12,” her reaction was less “It’s cool, you must be tired of taking off work, send the girl to school already!” and more “Um yeah, that is somewhat concerning, you should bring her in.” So I took her in, toting her brother along with us. The doc had no explanation but wanted to explore it further and sent us down the road to the children’s hospital outpost to get an x-ray. But when we got there, I couldn’t find the written orders the doctor had given me 10 minutes before. I scoured my car for the missing paper. Not there. I piled the kids back in the car, went back to the doctor’s office to find it. Not there. It – like the check – was nowhere.

My car was obviously eating paper.

So we went back to the x-ray place, where they sent me back out to my car just to “double-check” and then eventually called the doctor to fax the order over. (Which really, that office needs to step up the technology. I also had to fill out a yearly update that required me to write our home address four times and record Andy’s social security number in three different places. Let’s get with the program, people. There are unorganized moms like me all over the place.) By that time, I was tweeting about hating being me. I was *thisclose* to offing myself.

We finally got the x-ray done (which was clear, but we still don’t know what the issue is) and after a leisurely trip to Target and Jimmy John’s we got the ok from the cleaning lady to re-inhabit our house. When we got home, the missing check from this morning was safely tucked in our mailbox, with a note from the mailman saying he’d found it in the street a few houses down.

My faith in humanity was restored.

My faith in myself, however, will take a while to recover.

I had grand plans for this week… lots of fun activities, lots of things accomplished. I was so excited.

Andy, the kids and I haven’t been home together for an entire week since my maternity leave nearly four years ago.

Unfortunately, the stomach bug that plagued Jenny’s house a couple weeks ago made it to our house. Kate started throwing up Friday… we thought she was over it but she threw one more episode in for good measure the moment we walked through the door on Christmas night. Andy and my grandma got it on Tuesday, and Sam was puke-central on Wednesday.

Needless to say, we haven’t done lots of fun activities. We haven’t gotten lots of things accomplished.

While it appears that everyone is well now (fingers crossed) and I’m hoping to get out today to do something as a family, I must admit that having a little down time hasn’t been a completely horrible thing. I could have done without the puking, of course, but long naps and just chilling may have been what the doctor ordered. We haven’t had days like that in – I don’t know – forever.