2012: please don't let today be indicative...

... of the rest of the year.

Today did not get off to a great start.

First, Benjamin accidentally swiped my eye when he turned around to give me a hug, and took off a piece of my cornea.  Ouch!  My mom googled "corneal abrasion" and decided she should call her neighbor, who is an opthamologist.  His suggestion was that I go to the ER.  Given that our last visit to the ER has amounted to about $700 in bills, no thank you.  He said I needed an antibiotic.  So I paged my doctor, who called in a prescription for an antibiotic.  The antibiotic was $85 for 3 ml, which is also ridiculous, but less than $700, so I'll take it.

Then, Benjamin wouldn't eat breakfast, but Asher ate enthusiastically.  I was upstairs with Benjamin after breakfast and I heard Asher cough a couple of times and Eric cry out... Asher had thrown up his breakfast, and Eric had tried to get him from the dining room to the kitchen sink.  There was throw up across both rooms, and down the front of the cabinet, but almost none in the sink.  Yuck.

It was 9 o'clock and I still hadn't managed my cup of coffee, which was making me crabby.  I finally sat down to "enjoy" my coffee, and part of my breakfast (Benjamin stole the other half), when Asher pulled his kiddie chair up to the breakfast bar, got on the chair, and yanked a mat that had 3 clean wine glasses on it down over his head, smashing the glass all over the dining room.  While he reached up, we yelled "Asher, NO!" and he completely ignored us.

At that point, I called my mom, who kindly volunteered to come over and help out so we could make progress on the mess around us.

I was trying to clean up the dishes from our dinner party last night, and noticed that the sink seemed to have trouble draining.  I ran the garbage disposal several times and didn't think much of it.  Then Eric went to the basement and yelled up "The drain backed up! The basement is flooded!"  There was kitchen waste all over the basement.  I felt so terrible for Eric, he had to pull up all the laminate flooring he had put down, and unhook the washer and dryer, and deal with dirty water, and so on.  And of course we weren't exactly well-rested after staying up later than our usual 10:30 the night before.

The only positive was that the boys asked for naps.  I appreciate when they do that, rather than throw fits and get out of control.  Asher climbed in my arms and nodded when I asked him if he wanted to have a nap, and Benjamin took my hand and led me to the stairs, which he then climbed on his own and walked into the guest room, where he naps.

After naps, there were no further tragedies.  We went to ikea to replace the glasses Asher broke, and while we were there we noticed an inordinate number of toddler meltdowns.  It seems like everyone's children are overtired from the holidays and excitement and lack of schedule.  I am desperately hoping my boys start to sleep-- their crabbiness is wearing me down!

So here is hoping that 2012 is not a year full of bumps and frustrations (though of course they are part of life every year).  I'm looking forward to another year of adventures, excitement, and surprises from my boys!