Aaaaaaaah. That's more like it.

Ok I'm back. thanks to a stretch of 4 or 5 hours and another of 3 that was given to me last night by my still sick but possibly drugged into submission children. No, I only drugged one. And she still woke up 4 times. But she spaced it out better. The night before she had done a 10, 11, 12, 2, 4, 4:10, 4:20, 4:30 thing that pretty much killed me. Not to mention the diaper explosion of B at 5:30 immediately following. I mean, when it rains, it pours, right? I'm hoping that when I head in there this morning I will find then all over the third cold and A's eye will just turn out to have been a cold symptom and not have turned into pinkeye overnight. That would suck. Because my chances of not having three pinkeyes? Miniscule.

It's amazing how you can have night after night of miserable sleep and just one night with a longer section or two can completely revive you. I feel like a human being today. I can handle whatever thousand things I should be doing, smile at my kids, make it through without counting the seconds to bedtime the minute they get up from their nap and so on. Or I think so. The rest of the day remains to be seen. The first order of duty is a shower. Somehow with or without help, showering on the weekends is a lost cause. And yesterday? Just too tired to step into the box. So I stink. And tonight is date night. Gotta try to look good at least because hubby does.

I am fairly certain, however, that something must go wrong. For goodness' sake I have 3 toddlers. I am dreading a visit to the dr today. I am prepared for pinkeye so that wont send me but you just never know and I have a bad feeling. I have learned that my bad feelings are generally right on. I'm like a bloodhound on the trail of bad news. I'm sure you'll all be waiting on the edge of your seat for an update...

Slacker Sunday photo

How many other children do you thing have done this exact same thing to this exact same maraca recently? I'm thinking 3 billion. Germs at least.

ACHOO!

Boogers again. No, really, 3rd cold in 6 weeks, BOOGERS AGAIN!!! I can not believe it. I am ready to instruct all triplet childcare providers that my children will be doused in baths of hand sanitizer upon leaving any public arena and before all meals. Meanwhile I believe all of their toys will be boiled and dunked in gasoline before being lit on fire to sanitize them. Now, I'm not sure many toys will survive this process but A. we have a lot of stinking toys so we can spare a few, and B. I. Don't. Care. We need to stop this situation pronto. I will not wipe more snotty noses every two weeks and survive. I can not spend one more kiddie meal watching them eat equal quantities of boogers with each bite of food. I will vomit. I know it.

Perhaps I should just make them bubble children? Although the weight of entertaining them all day long in the house might kill me a different way than booger wiping would. Perhaps more painful? I mean, their attention span would require 800 different activities in one morning alone if they did not have sand, swings and play structures or the rec. center full of toys to explore. Perhaps it's a better trade off not having to be inventive or energetic every morning to let them be exposed to the 8 million germs left behind by other snotty children who's parents were perhaps not as vigilant about wiping their noses before they overflowed onto the communal toys.

Or perhaps I should spare myself the effort and let them run around with boogers hanging down to their knees, ignoring the evil eyes from other parents and pretending I don't see anything. Would spare me some of the gross out factor, but honestly? I have cute kids. I don't think I could stand to watch them covered in snot. I want everyone else to see how cute they are, not how bad of a mom I am. Focus on the children folks! Help me out a bit, lend a kleenex to the effort. For goodness' sake.

I don't know what the solution is but I am not a happy mom right now. Long nights with lots of wake ups due to coughs and congestion do not make for good mornings and energetic mothering. Crabby sick children do not make me love my job. And I have pretty good natured kids despite the illnesses, perhaps they're just getting used to constantly feeling sick? But there has to be an answer to stop this cycle. Is it just common in the summer for kids to be sick more often? More kids on the playgrounds since they're not in school and so they are passing around more colds? Whatever it is, I think I'm going to dress them head to toe in kevlar or teflon. Or some kind of hazmat suit made for kids. I think I just came up with my million dollar patent! Hazmat suits for toddlers! We would all be so much happier without sick toddlers! Who wants to give me seed money?

Birthed child pains

The pain of children doesn't end at childbirth. Sure, it was more direct during that pregnancy thing. Bladder kicks, stretching muscles and tendons, hemorrhoids, and the usual discomforts, not to mention the actual birthing process, I don't care how the baby or babies come out. It all hurts and it hurts a. lot. For some reason we choose to subject ourselves to it more than once quite frequently but we don't realize what we're in for in the long haul do we? The whole stinking process of raising kids is painful, and I'm not talking about the mental stuff!

First, there's the back breaking lifting and carrying and toting and rocking and walking of the baby or babies. My back hurt like hell during the first few months! I still don't now how women wear those baby carrier things, my shoulders would ache for days after. Sure, I had huge babies but people wear those with their babies all kinds of sizes and I just don't see how.

Next, at some point you baby proof and baby gates are in half the doors in the house. Baby gates are not for keeping kids in or out of a room, they're for torturing parents! Every time I walk in or out of a door I get a new bruise from knocking my thigh against the frame. I can't even open the things fast enough to keep from kicking the stupid gate on the way through. Unbelievable. Where's the stupid remote control that opens the door and slides the frame into the wall?

Then, inevitably, the kids decide you're a trampoline, punching bag, gym mat or whatever and start jumping on you, pounding on you, crawling all over you and generally treating you like a great big stuffed animal. Try telling them to be gentle when they realize that when they pound on your belly it jiggles in a very amusing way. Try getting them to stop jumping on you when they realize it's such a soft place to land. It just doesn't work.

Not to mention the endless round of unintentional head butts, book corner to cheek hits, plastic hammer whacks and random full on kicks by children not entirely sure how to coordinate their body parts yet. I have bruises all over, especially on my face, but that's probably because I'm stupid enough to lean in again and again while making smoochy smoochy noises to kiss bellies and faces and feet of flailing children. I suppose I'll never be able to resist. The learning curve is defeated by sheer hormonal attraction to baby belly. Ach.

I'm sure I've missed a few, but you get the general idea. Raising children is cause for many injuries, bruises, strains, headaches and general malaise. And I'm not even talking about the illnesses they give you. Cold after cold after flu after cold. Good gracious. I need a vacation.

Old faithful

You know, in a past life I was a wildlife rehabilitator. That means I medicated, stitched up, nursed, cleaned up after and got bitten by all types of native Maryland wildlife on a daily basis. I handled poop, blood, even maggots and sometimes watched necropsies while eating my lunch sandwich near the surgery table. I can't tell you where my strong constitution came from but I was relatively certain that there was little that could gross me out. I mean if you can pick maggots out of a deer hiney, you can do anything gross. Right?

Well, enter triplets A, B and C and their endless stream of colds. Oh, it's not their poop, diarrhea notwithstanding, that troubles me. It's not their barf, specifically barfmeister flex B who's repertoire includes a distinctly geyser like action usually just after being laid on his clean bedsheets and tends to then end up spread across my chest and arms as I have to gather him up and carry him to an appropriate changing area. It's not their gooey, partially masticated animal cookies that have turned into grey paste in their mouths just before they decide to give me a big kiss on the cheek. No, it's none of these things. It's snot.

It's stringy, sticky, crusty, gooey, neverending boogers that you try with kleenex after kleenex to remove in gobs from their tiny, yet prolific, nostrils that turn into miles long streamers of uncontainable ickiness. You think you've got the big one and you pull away only to find that it either bounces back, evading your grasp, or it stretches down into their toes and 8 more kleenex type objects are required to contain and remove said booger. Truly impressive. And I am thinking about this why? Because not more than a week and a half after then last booger invasion, we have the beginning signs of a new one. C is running at the nose like some sort of booger waterfall and I know it's just the beginning. It's never just one, and it's never just a little cold. Never.

Sure C looks innocent, but he's just busy mass producing boogers

Off to purchase more Boogiewipes!