We are still on the sick train around here. What you missed shortly after I hit publish on yesterday’s post about Silas and his fever was that Hannah began puking. Shortly after she had climbed into my bed.

So in case you are keeping score. Three kids. One fever. One puking. Good times.

Today I had planned to go to the gym. Go to the store. Get some house cleaning done. Work on a school project with Hannah. Oh and I had planned on doing all that on a full night’s sleep. Not on a few hours grabbed here and there.

So the to do list went out the window. They watched way too much TV today. We may or may not have gotten out of our pajamas. And most of the day was taken up with snuggling.

I got a mirror cleaned, dinner made and 2 loads of laundry done (see puke all over bed). That seemed like running a marathon today. It was one of those days. Or as I tweeted

Had one of those days where all the nasty food commercials sound delicious tonight. You KNOW it is a bad day when you crave Hot Pockets.*

Four pieces of dark chocolate later, I think I am calling it a day. Tomorrow I will tackle the to do list. Or stay in my pajamas and snuggle some more. It’s a toss up.

*this makes me think of this. And you can’t go wrong with this.

I have said more than once on this blog that raising Lily is like raising a small version of myself. Sometimes that makes it easy. Sometimes it makes it very hard.

But one of the ways we are quite alike is that we aren’t big fans of emotion. Well the good, happy ones I enjoy. But the sad ones, the ones that bring about the ugly cry? Not a fan. So I avoid them at all costs.

I am a pretty upbeat person. So is Lily. Definitely half full kind of people. But at the same time sometimes crap happens.

We will fight it. Which usually makes the whole thing uglier when it goes down. Throw in a couple of nights with too little sleep and you have a recipe for a meltdown.

So when I came in her room after some tough discipline tonight it didn’t surprise me that she was in (rare) tears. And as she tried to verbalize her feelings it was one of those strings that once pulled begins to unweave and unweave. And it ended with her telling me, “I just can’t stop crying.”

So I did the only thing I knew to do. Woman to woman, I told her to cry. She might as well learn early, sometimes a girl just needs a good cry.

ps. don’t forget the new marriage blog launches today. I would love it if you would go check it out! especially out new “author” page which is just cracking me up!

Happy 2012!! Can you believe it? As I get older time just goes by insanely fast.

We spent a lot of time over Christmas break watching old videos we had taken of my kids. You know how old ladies pull you aside and tell you to cherish all the moments you really REALLY don’t want to cherish because it goes by quickly. Well man. It is happening.

We had such a lovely holiday break. Lots of fun family giggling time. A few days where we didn’t make it out of pajamas. A few days where Lily and I laid in bed and polished off novels (reading them, not writing them). A few days with dance parties in the living room.

Even a few days potty training. Perhaps you followed the saga on Twitter. “Santa” got Silas some underpants (after training two girls I keep calling them panties much to my husband’s horror). I figured Christmas break was a good time to work on potty training because Ryan was off a fair amount and we would be home a lot.

The first day I gave up 2 hours in after several accidents and repeated (REPEATED) distractions from two sisters who were getting on my last “mom, she’s bothering me” nerve. I just didn’t think taking up drinking at ten a.m. was worth being diaper free. So I figured I would bag it and try again in six months (or six years).

But the thing is Silas REALLY wanted to go potty on the big potty (why oh why is my vocabulary consisting of the word potty these days?). He kept asking and asking to sit on it and although he wasn’t doing anything once he got on there I kept thinking it wasn’t wise to miss this window.

So yesterday we gave it another shot. Right off the bat in the morning we had 2 successes. We danced, we did a sticker chart and I gave him candy. Then I turned my back and he had peed all over (thankfully on the hardwood). Then I stumbled upon something genius. He had been asking for candy canes all day (I have no idea why or how a boy with a vocabulary of 5 words can say candy cane) so I went to the store and bought some small ones 75% off.

Those babies were the golden ticket. All I had to do was mention candy cane and he ran to the potty. We had a minor mishap with #2 so that is still up in the air, but #1 seems to be going very well. So at the risk of jinxing the whole thing I think 2012 might be The Diaper Free Diaries. Oh let it be so!!