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?

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.

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.

As I have whined about many, many times on this blog, I have sleeping troubles. So getting back to sleep after these wakings is difficult.  And then by the time I get back to sleep it seems he is awake again. My jaws ache from the tension I have when trying, trying, trying so hard to go to sleep.

I have left b!tchy comments on a few people’s Facebook statuses today.  I am just not myself, and I cannot let your status about your future sexcapades go without letting you know that I DON’T WANT TO KNOW.  Whether you are happily married or just whoring around, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW. MMkay?  I mean, I don’t WANT to have to “hide” you but I will.  I’m sorry if my posts about my infant’s blowout poops gross you out, but posting that you just did the nasty on your dining room table is WAY WORSE in my opinion.  But hey, if you can’t handle the poop, feel free to “hide” me as well.  We’ll just have to agree to disagree on what’s grosser.

So yeah. I need some sleep. And my kids to go back to school. And people to GET A FILTER.  Seriously, if your MOM is your FB friend, don’t be posting that!! She doesn’t want to know EITHER!

So, how’s YOUR week going??

Winter break is here, and if you’re like me, you are looking for fun things to do to keep the kids from driving you bonkers busy while they’re out of school.  If you’re anywhere near Dayton,  I strongly suggest the Robot Zoo exhibit at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery.

We love the Boonshoft, as I have mentioned many times, and their rotating exhibits are always a fun addition to our usual favorites like the live animals, the Cassano’s pizza-making station and the recycling center.  A few weeks ago Joshua, Sophie and I went to check out Robot Zoo and we had a BLAST! I think I like it just about as much as I liked Mindbender Mansion, their last exhibit.  Here’s why!

The exhibit features several robotic animals, like this Platypus (which Joshua and Sophie were *totally* jazzed about because they love Perry the Platypus from Phineas & Ferb!)  Using easily viewed and recognizable parts, these robots exhibit how a real animal’s real parts help that animal to function.  Kiddos can also control the robot animal with levers.  Very cool and they loved making “Perry” move around!

Joshua also loved the robot frog!

The best part about the Robot Zoo is that it is really interactive and hands-on.  It’s learning by doing, feeling, and participating, not just by looking. Here the kids are discovering how it feels to be an insect with sticky feet:

Robot Zoo will be at the Boonshoft until January 9, 2012, so make sure and check it out while your kiddos are on break for the holidays!  After all, you DON’T want to miss a photo opp like this one:

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I am being compensated for this post.  I paid for my family’s entrance to the Boonshoft, and all opinions about the exhibit are my own.

Scratch that, he’s right here in front of me.

I’m losing patience, Andy’s losing patience, this is a recipe for disaster.

He used to be such a good sleeper! I’d read him a book, sing him a song, lay him in his bed and he’d be out. Now? Not so much.

I suppose the trouble started when he moved into a real bed instead of his crib. I hated to move him, but for the love he was three and a half and way too big – he couldn’t turn over! Now it’s like someone slipped him an espresso 15 minutes before bedtime. He instantly has all the energy in the world and bounces off the walls. It’s so hard to settle him down.

This evening, at about 7:30 when we were finally sitting down to supper, he said he was tired and looked like he could hardly keep his eyes open. I knew I should just put him to bed, but I wanted him to eat something. Of course, he found his second wind and now it’s off to the races.

I honestly think the solution is to get him to bed earlier, but when we don’t darken the door until 6:00, it’s really hard to have any kind of semblance of family or relaxation time (or even dinner and a bath) and have him in bed by 7:30.

Now he’s in bed, but repeating “I can’t go to sleep in my bed” over and over.

I am about to shoot myself.

HELP. How can I get my good sleeper back?

So of course that’s what came to visit us, because I was not expecting it at all.  It started last Tuesday night when Joshua was complaining of a headache. I took his temperature and lo and behold, it was 101.4!  So I declared that he was not going to school the next day and put him to bed.  When he woke up still feverish the next morning and puked a couple times, I was pretty nervous.  But throughout the day, he actually improved.  His fever responded to ibuprofen, and he didn’t vomit anymore.  He was still peaked, but he ate a couple popsicles.  When Sophie got home from school, they played really nicely together.  She was rather happy to have her big brother home.  Then he started feeling bad again, as it got later, and I wasn’t sure whether he’d be well enough to go to school Thursday or not.  We put both big kids to bed in the hopes that he would wake up all better.

And THEN Sophie woke up and vomited alllll over her bedroom at about 11:15.  I got her undressed and threw her in the bathtub while Bobby went to work on her bedroom. Let me tell you that one of the pleasures of having a daughter with long, glorious hair is scrubbing puke out of it in the middle of the night. Oh, did I say pleasures? Because I meant HORRORS!!  Ick. Poor Soph had a rough night and also a rough early morning.  She was quite a bit sicker than Joshua had been.  He still had a fever in the morning, though, so I kept them both home.  At about 3:30 in the afternoon, an exhausted and sick Sophie girl fell asleep on the couch.  She slept for almost three hours!

Pathetic!

Joshua was doing ok, but he started feeling bad again as night fell and his fever went back up to 101.4.  So, I kept him home Friday too.  Friday – day 3 with two sick big kids!  But Friday wasn’t too bad – they were definitely recovering.  Less TV and more playing, and they both ate peanut butter toast instead of just popsicles.  By Saturday morning, they were both back to normal.  Joshua’s energy was through the ROOF! You could tell he hadn’t been out in a few days.

So, Saturday was good. Saturday we were all gloriously healthy.  All seemed right again.

Until I woke up at 3:30 Sunday morning to feed the baby, and had to throw, I mean, quickly place him back in his crib to avoid throwing up all over him.

Oh, I was sick. SO, SO sick.  I can’t remember the last time I was that sick!  I threw up a million more times that the kids did combined.  All day Sunday, I laid in bed because I couldn’t sit up with having to throw up. It. Was. Baaaad.  Bobby took care of the kids, took them to a birthday party, brought me whatever I needed – he was great.  I couldn’t even sit up to nurse Jonah, I had to nurse him lying down. I don’t know what I would have done had this occurred on a week day!

So – we’ve had our holiday sickness!  Please germs and cooties, stay away from us at least until after Christmas, we’ve paid our dues and sacrificed to the porcelain god.

________

P.S. I totally stole the term “Apukealypse” from my pal Dawn.

However, there’s another big food question mark in the middle of my day – lunch. I rarely plan ahead for lunch, which means I either grab something quick (and expensive and not so healthy), or I scavenge something to eat out of my desk drawer, and then find myself ravenous when I get home. I think that’s a common problem for working moms and stay-at-home moms alike. Jenny has posted before about how her lunch sometimes consists of Mountain Dew and a hunk of cheese. I guess it’s another symptom of putting ourselves last! But it’s time for a change.

I thought I’d brainstorm and see what ideas I could come up with for easy, quick, yet affordable and nutritious lunches. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
– Leftovers – provided a) I cook the night before, b) there’s anything left, and c) I can remember to take it with me in the morning.
– Soup – there’s nothing appealing to me about breaking out a can of soup at lunch time, but there have been times that I’ve had my act together and have frozen portions of homemade soup (made by my grandma, not so much by me) to take with me. That actually works out pretty well. I also saw a thing on pinterest that suggested freezing soup in muffin tins, so you essentially have a soup ice cube.
– Frozen meals – honestly, having a stash of microwavable meals at work is probably the only way for me to make sure I stay out of the it’s-noon-and-I-need-food-but-I-don’t-have-any frenzy. However, I used to try to stay away from them because I don’t like the idea of fake food and preservative (unless those things are in Oreo form. Then I’m totally behind them).

Enter: the answer to this quandary – Healthy Choice Top Chef Inspired Cafe Steamers. TheMotherhood.com asked me to try them out and write a post about them, but truth be told, I had already discovered them. Basically, the meals come with the sauce separate from the meat and vegetables, and they steam to cook. They come in eight different varieties, including Barbeque Seasoned Steak with Red Potatoes, Chicken Fresca with Chardonnay, and Chicken Linguini with Red Pepper Alfredo. They are also budget-friendly – they cost between $2.75 and $3.50.

I’m going to keep a few of these in the freezer at work, and on days when I don’t have it together enough to have packed something, I’ll have them ready as an alternative to fast food.

Do you struggle with feeding yourself during the day? What are some strategies you’ve found to fit eating into your schedule?

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This post was sponsored by Healthy Choice through The Motherhood. For more info, check out their website, facebook page or follow them on .

The feline that began my speedy decline...

Today I went shopping for supplies for Sophie’s birthday party.  She wants a Hello Kitty party, and thanks to all the other “fun moms” (I’m looking at YOU, Koproski, Berry, Loyd, and Perlow – and don’t even get me started on YOU, Princess Party Emmons) whose children’s parties Sophie has attended, the child now expects a pinata and goody bags at said party.  So, my years of being a super-cheap mom are OVER.

But I was okay with that, to a point, because you see, I had a Living Social voucher to a local party store, which I’d bought with credits I’d built up. It was valued at $30 so I thought, certainly I could get out of the party store only spending a few bucks.  So, even though every fiber of my being was screaming “NOOOOOOOOOO”, I purchased a Hello Kitty pinata for $20.  That’s right, I spent twenty bucks on PAPER that is going to get ripped to SHREDS before the party is over.   I also bought two packs of Hello Kitty plates, a pack of regular pink plates (for the grown-ups), a Hello Kitty banner, two packages of pink forks, and some wrapping paper.

My total before the voucher came to $57. FIFTY-SEVEN DOLLARS.  So I spent $27 out-of-pocket when I went in there expect to spend less than ten! What the crap?  Clearly I should have gotten into the “Party Store” business.  I didn’t even get party HATS, or a game!! Sheesh.

I bought goody bags and favors at the Dollar Tree. Much more my speed.  But since there are eleventy-billion kids coming to the mega party of the year, I still had to get a ton. Guess, what, if you are a boy, and you are coming to Sophie’s party, you are getting candy in your goody bag and that’s it!  Sorry, dudes.  The girls are getting a couple extra trinkets. Because there’s only 9 girls and there’s like, 678 boys attending.

But anyhoo. THE POINT IS:

I got my daughter a $20 pinata.  Because she really, really wanted it.  I would have rather spent another $20 on a gift for her but I caved.  I caved hard.

I might not be a “fun mom” yet…but I’m definitely more fun than I’ve ever been..by Joshua’s birthday in February I’ll probably have rented each of his party guests their own pony for a day.

HELP!!!  I’m slip-sliding away…

8:30 leave to take Sophie to school

8:45 drop Sophie off

8:46 Jonah and I go Krogering

9:25 (hopefully!) arrive home

9:26 put Jonah to bed

9:35 unload groceries

9:45 breathe

11:00 (if not sooner) Jonah wakes up

11:00-11:15 feed and change Jonah

11:20 leave to get Sophie at school

11:30 pick Sophie up

11:45 arrive home, make lunch

12:15 Mommy & Sophie work time

12:45 get Sophie dressed for gymnastics

1:10 leave for gymnastics

1:45-2:45 gymnastics

3:15 arrive home, Joshua arrives home from school

5:00 leave for Emily’s house for our trick-or-treating tradition!!!!

5:30 arrive at Emily’s, stuff faces with pizza, stuff kids into costumes

6:00 TRICK OR TREAT!!

8:00 drive home

8:30 hustle kids to bed

9:00 fall down dead exhausted

*Shew*!!  It’s going to be a crazy day! What are YOU doing?  Can’t wait to post our trick-or-treat pictures!