I believe this is the slowest day ever. My thoughts that life with three children would be hectic was correct, but watching three does not pass the time any faster. In fact time seems to have slowed to a crawl. I feel like I have lived a whole day plus and it is only 10:45. Barely snack time…

This is the best birth control ever.

M spent yesterday puking, and my sister spent last night in the bathroom as well. It is only a matter of time before I too am felled by the virus that has now hit three out of five current residents in my family. So if I disappear from the blogsphere for a while, you will know I am on the floor of my bathroom.

And Rebecca, I am fairly confident you don’t want to come over this afternoon. Perhaps you can finally meet Baby C this summer, when she is, ahem, two and clearly no longer a baby. I think I need to come up with a new nickname for her…

C (as he survey the mess that is our house right now): “Auntie M must be really special. We didn’t try to tame the chaos for her.”

Yes, she is special. Whether she is horrified by the state of my house or not, she is my sister and is stuck with me regardless of my housekeeping and toy organizing abilities.

So sorry for the mess Auntie M, I thought about picking up for you for a good five minutes right before A started drawing on the hardwood floor….

I apologize, but you are about to be subjected to yet another sleep rant. But I’m tired and grumpy as I’ve been up trying to get A back to sleep since 4am, so you get to suffer along with me, or stop reading now. Your choice….

The child didn’t get to bed until 9pm last night as we had to pick up my sister and Baby C at the airport. How could she possibly be up at 4am? With a 1am wake up thrown in there for good measure. It’s unbelievable.

We cannot continue to function like this. Or shall I say I cannot continue to function like this. I am a 8+ hour a night gal. But there is just no way I can get eight hours if she continues to wake up at 4 or 5 am. I can’t possible go to bed at 8pm every night, I have to pick up the chaos from the day, cook dinner for M, do laundry, and get all the crap that can’t get done while the kids are up done. Plus, nine times out of ten someone in my house is still up at 8pm, and I am guaranteed at least one and generally three plus wakes ups by one child or the other.

I am tired and cranky and am a lousy parent these days as I am just to tired to have any patience. I fly off the handle at the smallest incident, and am on the verge of tears most of the time. I keep waiting for her sleep to get better and it just gets worse and worse. She is clearly tired, so it’s not even that she doesn’t need as much sleep as I do. She just doesn’t know how to sleep.

I don’t even know where I am going with this as I am too tired to type. So I’m just going to crawl onto the couch and mumble incoherently as A plays dolls now.

While at the pediatrician’s this morning C was clamoring for attention while Dr. S and I discussed A’s, ahem, pooping issues.

C: “Dr. S! Dr. S!”

Dr. S: “Yes C?”

C: “I got to watch TWO shows downstairs and TWO shows upstairs!”*

Dr. S (while giving me a really??? It’s only 11am look): “Really????”

C (Happy as a clam): “Yeah!”

Mommy: “Did you TELL Dr. S what time you and A got up this am???”

C: “Oh. Yeah. Too bloody early.”

Thankfully his speech is incomprehensible enough that I don’t think she caught the bloody…

As for A’s issues, while I now have to collect six, count them, six stool samples into very small vials to rule out parasitic infections and the like, the current opinion is that the fact that the child refuses to eat anything with protein and fat is the actual root of the issue. Apparently a diet consisting of only fruit and vegetables is not so gentle on a toddler’s tummy.

*By my count it was actually two shows total, the tail end of Blues Clues downstairs, Blues Clues upstairs while I showered, and then the begining of Miffy before I lured them to the table with chocolate chip waffles and plums.**

** And no, A did not touch the waffles. Just the plum. If I can’t get the child to eat chocolate chip waffles, I dare someone to get her to eat fat and protein.

During an emergency run for diapers and wipes and cat food yesterday afternoon, C LOST it because I refused to buy him whatever junky toy had caught his fancy. He was tired as he hasn’t napped in a really long time now, and I was tired because I haven’t slept in a really long time now, which is a deadly combination. I refused to cave, as once I cave once I’ll be buying junky toys whenever we enter a store. Instead I tried to use my limited inner calm reserves to repeatedly say “Put the toy back, I am not buying it.”

After about ten minutes of this he finally headed back to rack where he had found it but as we wended our way to the registers (forget the paper towels that we also really needed) he continued to sob hysterically. My voice first became deadly calm, and then headed into the high-pitched “I am trying not to scream” registers as I began threatening the revocation of TV privileges if he didn’t get it together.

A woman with three teenage boys in tow stopped us as we turned a corner and immediately starting conversing with C while her children continued on with her shopping list. “Do you have a cat at home?” she asked while eyeing the cat food in the cart. C looked suspiciously at her but stopped crying and nodded. “What color is it?” “We have TWO cats,” C responded promptly. “Ohhh. How lucky. What are there names?” She continued to follow us for a bit, chatting with C as she dispatched her incredibly mild-mannered and well-behaved teens around the store to pick up her list, and even sent one to get me paper towels.

As she finally split off to find her own checkout line, I gave her a heartfelt thank you. She smiled a gentle smile and said “We’ve all been there.” Her teens fell into line and helped her sort and bag. I found it hard to believe that her children had ever been anything but helpful and quiet, but was grateful for her solidarity.

Thank you, thank you random stranger for saving my sanity yesterday afternoon. And in return, I promise to save the sanity of others just as soon as my children behave as well as yours in the store.

We didn’t get the house. We decided not to go to our top number for a variety of reasons, but the one that seems most critical? Not the fact that the kitchen needed to be gutted. Not the fact that the garage had been ravaged by termites and had to be ripped down and replaced. No, the deciding factor was that we couldn’t figure out where to put the TV in the family room. So we bid low and lost. “Blown out of the water,” as our real estate agent put it.

Apparently, someone has better interior design capabilities than we do. Or perhaps they are not as concerned about proper TV placement and will spend the next umpteen years regretting their purchase decision. But after spending the past three years craning to get a glimpse of the screen while hanging off of the couch, the location of the TV in any future home is apparently of utmost concern to us.

You may all laugh now.

Well, since my brain is otherwise occupied for the next 12 hours or so obsessing over whether we bid the right number or not on the dream house, I’m going to follow the herd and direct you all to a Johari Window. Plus, I’m very curious to see what people who have never met me think I am like. Can you tell that I have always loved the self-help and “find your inner self”quizzes in women’s magazines?

So join in and play along…and when we know something, anything about the house y’all will be the first (or second or third) to know. You know, right after the mortgage folks who will own us for the rest of our lives.

“It’s going to be a bloodbath” were the real estate agent’s parting words this morning. Apparently nine, count them nine, people now think that our dream house is also their dream house. And they are still showing the house until 6pm today, so who knows how many more people will conspire to take away the house that is so clearly supposed to be ours.

I shouldn’t have gone back in to see it today. Or told a close friend who lives three blocks over we were bidding on it, as her visions of walks and park meet-ups and easy kid-swaps painted way too wonderful a picture.

I’m a nervous wreak. I’m not cut out for a bidding war. And C is under the impression that we have already bought the house and has picked out his room, designated corners for all of his toys in the playroom, and announced exactly where a swingset will go.

The next 24 hours are going to be a living hell.

Update: The bid is in. I guess we hear tomorrow if we are in on round two(yes, at least two rounds of this nonsense). C started packing at quiet time today. It’s going to be ugly if we don’t get the house….

At 8pm last night I got “the call” from C’s preschool; school has been cancelled. As I squinted outside to see if it had started snowing again without my knowledge, I was a bit confused. I mean, it had stopped snowing at 1pm or so. Everyone should have been shoveled out by this point. The road, while still snow covered, was passable as evidenced by the numerous cars headed down the street. And we were talking 12 hours longer for the crews to plow one more time. The town isn’t THAT big…

Clearly, I am no longer in New England. And I am definitely not in upstate NY where school was only cancelled once. I could understand if we were in the south someplace. But it’s not like we never get snow here; there is at least one big storm and many little storms a year in our area. And this one happened on a weekend. Clearly I am missing something; perhaps it will become clear when I actually head outside and try to make it to the grocery store with two children in tow.

I’m actually kind of glad school was cancelled as it means I got a few days reprieve on the execution of a Valentine’s day craft. And M is thrilled because he didn’t have to stay home this morning to watch A as I made a fool out of myself with glue and scissors. It’s really just the principle of the thing…snow days should happen when it is still snowing outside.