Just one of those days

There are days when my children can play together, the picture of brotherly and sisterly love. I can go about the day, accomplishing a thing or two, while they talk, laugh and play. We all come together to eat, color, and do other activities as a group, then they break away to do their own thing. They share when they are asked to. They want to do the same activities and generally enjoy each others' company. Life is easy.

Then there are days like today. Every two minutes, one comes in crying about the egregious offenses committed by the other. It's impossible to get anything done, because as soon as I start something, I can hear the piercing shrieks from one or the other as the atrocities mount. I have been trying to clean the kitchen for the last two hours, not that anyone could tell.

At one point, Nicky came racing into the room, while Laney shrieked bloody murder. He had in his hand a little piece of I-don't-know-what, some small strappy thing, that I'd seen in Laney's hand some while before. "Mommy, you have to hide this," he said trying to enlist my help in tormenting his little sister. I just sighed, took the strappy thing and gave it back to Laney. Nicky didn't say anything, knowing his plan had been thwarted and not really caring that much. They just moved on to some new way of annoying each other.

So if you were to walk into my kitchen and become alarmed by the health hazardous state, I will only accept 80 percent of the blame. The rest we can all blame on my kids and their refusal to share a bowl of grapes or to continually grab things from each other or just plain being pains in the ass.