yesterday was a bad day.

kaye actually looked at me at one point around 4 pm and told me i had crazy eyes.

and you know what. i probably did.

i had been at the end of my sanity rope since about 1 pm.

sawyer had already blown out two diapers and i'm nearly positive ate the better part of a large, pink crayon. i guess that will be confirmed tomorrow when i see crayola paper in her drawers.

overall, i would say sawyer was perpetually unhappy the majority of the day. minus the 20 minutes i put her in the shower because i wasn't sure what else to do with her. and she liked lunch. and she wasn't crying during her nap...so there were a few wins in there.

kaye was great...and usually is great unless something completely and totally obscure and irrelevant sets her off...then you would think i told her i was going to burn all her toys in front of her. huh?

sobbing - fit throwing - screaming - negotiating

99% of the time i try my entire bag of tricks...and 99% of the time i end up sending her to her room until she can calm down.

the particular kaye-fit that induced my crazy eyes had to do with a band-aid and her requesting i take it off her knee...and then not wanting me to take it off. and then wanting me to take it off...and then not wanting me to take it off. finally...i told her i was done and that when she was ready to come get me i'd help her out. this just made her scream and cry harder. so i told her she needed to go calm down in her room. and she did.

all about a bandaid covering a non-existent wound.

she soon came upstairs and told me she was calm and ready to be a good girl. great! exactly what i wanted to hear...especially because sawyer hadn't stopped crying for nearly two hours. granted...she's sick, but when it gets to the point where she insists on me holding her and insists on crying directly in my ear...i could feel my sanity slipping.

there was a blessed moment where sawyer faked interest in the iPad. kaye was quickly onto her game and ripped it from her hands. sawyer broke our blessed peace with wales of grief and i told kaye she needed to give it back.

first - kaye wouldn't give the iPad back.

second - kaye threw a fit and actually stomped her feet. i was like...uhh? oh no you di'int.

so now kaye was crying AND sawyer was still crying. i could feel the crazy boiling up inside me. if i'm recalling correctly i think i clapped my hands loudly three times and i may have even growled in frustration. and by growled i mean screamed or cursed or maybe it was an actual growl. whatever it was...it wasn't my finest moment.

my finest moment came in the seconds that followed when i had a moment of clarity and picked sawyer up and put her in her crib. i then grabbed kaye and put kaye in sawyer's crib.

kaye is fully capable of crawling out of said crib but i do believe they were both flabbergasted. i watched the monitor as they looked at each other and looked to the door and back to each other. several minutes of glorious silence passed. pretty soon kaye had sawyer laughing and i hear kaye say over the monitor, "see mommy. bitty likes me. she's laughin'"

nothing like sweet words from your three year old to make you feel like a crazed asshole.

and then...as i sit here writing i realize our day wasn't so bad. just about five hours were rough. we started off with kaye wearing her new sunglasses saying, "i'm going to be a movie star."

we headed over to the shop and visited our farmer while he worked on equipment. we walked down and saw some chickens and the goats.

later, while bitty napped, kaye and i got our workout in.

after lunch we headed outside - it was the first time i was excited it was windy. i had purchased a kite for the gals in california and we needed to give it a test run. kaye got a turn. bitty got a turn. i chased after it more than five times when they inevitably let the handle go...even after i reminded kaye each time, "hold on super tight with your super strength." she cried and told me, "i don't have super strength, mama."

let's just forget our rough moments. we had a good day.