Last night was another rough one.  Liam is still sick.  He’s doing just fine for as long as his medicine lasts, but as soon as it wears off, he’s right back to being feverish and miserable — and it wears off several hours before he’d due to get more.  Also, medicated or not, whenever he lays down, he gets all clogged up and can’t breathe.  Poor guy . . . and thus, again, poor parents.

I got a little more sleep last night — I mostly slept from about 2:00 until about 5:00 this morning — but that was only because Dan took on more of the middle of the night visits to the boys’ room.  All totaled, I’ve had less than 6 hours of sleep over the past two nights.  And while that’s not nearly the worst I’ve had it, it’s no fun (especially because there was, unbelievably, no nap for the boys yesterday either, and only a 20 minute nap for Liam today).

Today, I got up to bravely tackle the day.  It’s a holiday here in Austria (but not for the UN) so B didn’t have school but Dan did have work.  Dan offered to stay home (he has leave he can take for sick family members) but I figured I could manage, since I didn’t have much planned today and our friends are here — in case I needed a moment to catch my breath, or a hand with something.  Then, I managed to get back to bed for an hour this morning, because after I got Liam down (around 6:30) and B woke up immediately thereafter, but I was able to convince him to lay down again for an hour.  I was tired, I was feeling rough, but, I thought, I could handle it, as long as I had enough coffee.

And then, we had the trifecta of mommy meltdown fodder.  While the boys were sitting at the table having breakfast, I came back from retrieving more Cheerios to find that Liam had emptied our entire new package of napkins onto the floor.  I felt overwhelmed and quite a bit frustrated, but I was still ok.  Still, I texted Dan to tell him that I might, upon further reflection, need him to take the afternoon off today . . . especially because I was imagining my mental state would be pretty rough if we went another day without a nap.  This was followed, moments later, while I was preparing some much needed coffee, by hearing Benjamin chant, “Fling them!  Fling them!  Fling them!”  I rushed back to the table to see Liam scooping his Cheerios and milk, by the spoonful, and (as requested) flinging them against the wall and windows.  At that point, I texted Dan again to tell him I would, indeed, be requiring him at home this afternoon.

And, just in case I wasn’t 100% certain I was making the right decision, I then proceeded to spill the contents of B’s potty all over the bathroom floor.  No worries at that point that I was overreacting to my current mental state by having Dan come home.  I was in full pre-meltdown mode:  frazzled, sweating, stressing out, feeling overwhelmed, on the verge of absolutely freaking out about something that would have made me sigh and roll my eyes on a better day.

So, Dan come home (with lunch!) at the middle of the day and stayed home, to take care of all of us.  After short naps for everyone, B did a major faceplant on the floor resulting in a bloody nose and a very fat lip (he used the ice packs pretty liberally though and looks amazingly good now).  And, Liam’s fever has now stopped responding so well to the ibuprofen, so he has an appointment with the pediatrician tomorrow.  I hate using a leave day on something that seems so minor, but I’m really happy that today didn’t end in tears, screaming or any lost tempers . . . especially from me.  I call this a win.