One of those days

Today was the perfect storm:

1) The fourth (or fifth?) week that one or both of the kids have come down with whatever kid-illness is going around. They both had the respiratory thing, D is just getting over the high-fever-and-endless-hacking-cough thing, and now A has the vomiting/diarrhea thing. Yay.

2) House inspections. Today we had the inspection for the house we want to buy. Friday is our inspection (please, Lord, let it pass). It's the culmination of three crazy, insanely busy weeks of showings, cleaning, negotiations, cleaning, late night meetings, cleaning and signing of documents involving numbers bigger that I ever imagined seeing attached to my name. And cleaning. I don't know how our realtor, who has three young kids of her own, manages to hold it together. I could never handle this level of activity on a long-term basis. It's the main reason we decided I was better of as a stay-home mom.

3) A is driving me: up a wall, to tears and, quite possibly, to drink. I think we might be getting close to some terrible two behavior. Besides being sick off and on since early October, he has developed quite the fussy attitude toward food, life in general and me in particular. He fusses if I won't pick him up and cries if I do. He follows me around, whinging. He won't eat anything but bread-y things, pasta and applesauce (the diarrhea thing surprised me -- you'd think he'd be completely stopped up), and when he's not eating, he's crying or throwing chewed-up bits of food around the dining room. But it's the whinging that's killing me slowly. I feel like a horrible mom sometimes -- like he's whinging because of something I'm doing/not doing. I get impatient and yell. I am short-tempered. And I know all of this simply makes me human, not a bad mom, but you still feel bad when you yell at your kids. Although in the end it's probably better than never yelling at your kids and then they grow up never being able to take criticism. These past three weeks have confirmed a couple of things for me:
1) it's quite OK to use TV as a babysitter, especially when you are talking to mortgage brokers. 2) there's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking your 16 month old in their crib when the fussing/whining/crying/dropping of heavy objects on your feet gets too much, especially when you are talking to mortgage brokers. And 3) Children aren't going to turn out to be axe murderers if they eat pasta for every meal for a few weeks.

Thank you to everyone for your well wishes and congratulations... keep 'em coming. Closing isn't for a few more weeks.