And I have how many days left until they go back to school?

I am currently 56 percent zombie, 41 percent coffee and the rest cracker candy.

That's because my sweet 4-year-old Adele had a minor freakout at 2 in the morning in the form of hysterical screaming about spiders in her bed.  (Spiders this time, not snakes.)  And so I lay with her for awhile to calm her down, and I noticed that she sounded horribly congested and wouldn't stop coughing.  I got her some cough medicine and hippie decongestant salve and returned to my own bed, hoping to quickly return to sleep.  I knew it was wishful thinking because I am self aware, but still.  I wanted to believe it was possible.

But then, of course, Adele began fake crying because she's not supposed to get out of bed and that was her way to get our attention.  She's not supposed to get out of bed because for the past few weeks (WEEKS) she has come downstairs in the middle of the night to our bed.  We let her stay for a bit then one of us (me) will carry her back to her own bed.  And neither parent goes back to sleep.

So instead of coming downstairs after we told her not to she put her head right by her door and fake cried until I made it back upstairs.  I gave up at that point.

I stayed in her bed until around 5.  I think I slept some.  A bit.  But not nearly enough.  And today I needed to run to the store for jewelry supplies because I had two necklace orders and desperately needed chains even though I was sure I'd bought an obscene amount the last time I stocked up and how did I go through so many so fast?  (Obviously, this is a good problem to have.  Just not today.)

So the kids and I went out, me partially awake and Adele majorly tired and possibly on the verge of a meltdown.  But luckily that didn't show up until we were waiting in line at the bookstore to get a drink and I refused to buy her a cookie.  We were at the bookstore because I didn't have the energy to disagree with my son who really, really wanted to go there.  That's also how we ended up with a chapter book.  Well, that and I'm a sucker for books and it's pretty awesome that he's reading chapter books and I'm ok with encouraging it.

And maybe I would have been okay with buying a cookie for the kids if they hadn't spent the entire weekend eating nothing but sugar.  We had three parties to go to on Saturday which included cupcakes and gingerbread house and cookie decorating and hot chocolate and chocolate covered pretzels and - and - and ...

And on Sunday we had my parents' Christmas party where the rest of us ate lasagna but my two unnatural children don't actually like lasagna and so survived on Pez.

So I thought I'd attempt to get them back on some sort of halfway-healthy-type of food plan, which didn't include overpriced cookies from the bookstore cafe.  Adele flipped out so we left that line and went in the book-buying line, which actually was longer than the over-priced coffee and cookie line.  And she wouldn't stop flipping out so I put her Barbie book back and just bought Sebastian's book because he was behaving like a civilized human being.

And then she screamed in the car when she realized I hadn't bought her book.

Thems the breaks, kid.

We went home and ate lunch and Adele took a nap, which means that she was exceptionally tired because she didn't even protest me forcing her in her room all that much.  I honestly think she was a little relieved.

I probably should have taken a nap myself but I had three baskets of laundry to fold and Gilmore Girls to marathon and so I just made another pot of coffee and had a few more bites of cracker candy an considered myself sustained.

Lest you think I was completely neglecting my older child, he was around, and perfectly behaved because he spent his afternoon watching youtube videos of a boy opening toys and playing with them.  Now, I don't necessarily understand the concept of evantube, but it keeps him occupied.

Good Lord, is it only the first day of Christmas break?