Gypsy Speed Dial

I think the faeries sneaked into our house and replaced our normally pleasant, well-behaved children with shrieking, flailing changeling babies. If there ever was a day that Dad and I were tempted to sell our children to the gypsies, this was probably it (amazingly, today even beat out any of the colic days). My day began pleasantly at 1:30 a.m. when Molly woke up ... and could not (or would not) to go back to sleep. Mind you, we're still sticking to the Operation Sleep rules that dictate that there is no nursing and no picking up between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Usually this isn't a big problem -- Molly wakes up, fusses for a couple of minutes, and goes back to sleep. Last night, the couple of minutes turned into a half hour, then an hour, then two ... she pretty much kept it up until 4 a.m. when she finally fell asleep. I got up a few times to comfort her, but she was never really distraught, just fussy and awake. She didn't have a fever, her diaper wasn't dirty, and she was warm enough. She was up again promptly at 5 a.m., nursed, and didn't want to go back to sleep (she's learned the word "no" and uses it with great frequency).

So, we stumbled downstairs where Molly decided it would be fun to run around and shriek at the top of her lungs. This, of course, woke up Max, who for equally mysterious reasons had been awake and singing in his bed until 10:15 p.m. the previous night. So, it was just barely 6 a.m., I'd managed a grand total of about 2 hours of sleep and I was up with two very overtired children. Things pretty much went downhill from there. ;) Neither child took an adequate nap and both spent a good deal of the day screaming, crying, and writhing about on the floor. Most of tonight's dinner was thrown on the floor. Needless to say, we soldiered on through dinner and baths and tried to get everyone to bed promptly. Add the baby craziness to the holiday craziness and general work craziness and today has been an exhausting day.

I'm not sure what the cause of the bad moods is -- I'm afraid that one or both of them may be catching a cold. If that isn't the problem, then I'm worried that Molly is having a reaction to the MMR shot she got two weeks ago (which would mean Max is either catching a cold or just overtired from all the Molly drama). Molly has developed a small pimply rash on her cheeks over the last couple of days, but right now it doesn't look like a shot reaction rash and she sometimes gets rashy cheeks. I'm sure hoping tonight goes a little better -- if it doesn't, Operation Sleep will be temporarily suspended while Molly isn't feeling well. Everyone knows that sick little girls need their Mmmbies and cuddles. ;)