I love the kids, but c'mon

So we had a bad day today. It was bad in so many dimensions that it's difficult to know where to start. Let's see...

First, Teddy was up a lot last night and ended up spending most of the night in our bed. This reflects a more general problem - the kids, especially Margaret who is now about to get out of her bed and can stagger into our room in the middle of the night, often get up during the night. Rather than trying to get them back to sleep in their own beds, we often let them sleep with us. This arrangement works ok in some instances, but in others, it disrupts our sleep too much, especially when we're all crammed in the bed together. Nevertheless, rather than fighting the kid-in-our-bed syndrome and spending hours trying to get them back to sleep in their own beds, we've generally allowed them to crash in our bed once they wake up. Maybe (probably?) a mistake, and something that we've been trying to figure out how to fix, but that's the current status quo.

Still, last night was a particularly bad night with the boy. When I came up to bed, Teddy was already in our bed. I tried to move him back to his bed, but at some point, shortly after I fell asleep, he woke up and started howling. I tried to lay on the floor next to his bed - a really lovely situation - but eventually decided to bring him back to our bed rather than risking him waking Margaret. He spent the next few hours tossing and turning, constantly hitting me in the back. Teddy tends to grope around in our bed, grabbing us in various ways that prevent us from falling asleep, even when he's asleep. So I didn't get much rest. Thanks, Teddy.

Then, sometime during the night, he managed to overwhelm his diaper and left a wet spot on our bed. Lovely.

Margaret and he then had their usual battles in the morning over books and such. And Teddy howled, as he invariably does, about his sweater when I put it on him. Great.

After I picked them up from school, Teddy again howled about his sweater. Margaret then howled about her inability to use a particular "balance beam" (i.e., a wall near a sidewalk that she likes to walk on) because some other random toddler was using it. On average, I think, our life is pretty pleasant. The problem is that the average masks the wild variation that arises from one kid screaming while the other is beaming followed by the reverse of that situation. In this case, Teddy was a cheerful fellow in the front of the stroller as he informed me of the distress experienced by his sister in the back.

Then we went to the grocery store where Margaret had a major meltdown because I wouldn't buy her some cheese. This lasted for about 30 minutes during the entire visit to the grocery store and a good chunk of time afterwards. It got to the point where she was basically hyperventilating, and despite my irritation with her, I had to spend some time calming her down.

We then got home where Teddy and Margaret proceeded to pummel each other for a while. Margaret tends to use more sophisticated "psychological" warfare - such as teasing Teddy by holding a book out of his reach - while Teddy tends to use more physical methods - such as climbing all over his sister while she tries to read a book. I try to separate them, but they seem to be inevitably attracted to one another, such that they invariably end up in a conflict that makes one or both scream. Of course, during all of this, I'm trying to make dinner. Which wasn't helped tonight when Margaret managed to send water from the sink all over the kitchen. And both of the kids were badgering me, as they always do, for some sort of "special treat" to eat before dinner. The path of least resistance is to give them something, but then they don't eat any dinner. Such are the dilemmas that I face.

Eventually, Mom came home and we managed to eat dinner. A lovely dinner, I might add, of pork vindaloo. After which I was done - I handed the kids off for their baths and headed down to send some emails and watch TV. Just as well, I think, as Teddy managed, for the first time, to poop in the bathtub. Just perfect.