Purging of another sort

What a crappy day. I am at my wits' end with the kids lately . . . I think they hate me. They don't listen to me and I am finding that I have all this anger. Why do I have to tell them 26 times to do something? The biggest problem is getting them (especially the twins) to clean up after themselves. They trash the house, dragging all their toys and books and dress-up clothes all over the place, and when I tell them to clean it all up, they ignore me. I tell them again. They whine. I threaten, I bribe, I reward, I reason with them - nothing works. The Good Kid Buck system I implemented a couple weeks ago? The novelty of that wore off really quickly. I've even resorted to getting an extra large Rubbermaid bin and dumping all their un-picked-up toys into the bin and taking it all away from them to teach them a lesson. The first couple times I did it, they were hysterically upset, but after that? Not so much. In fact, I think they figured out that it's an excellent way to get Mommy to do the clean-up work. Ugh. So today was a day like that - with me telling them to clean up their gigantic messes, them ignoring me, and me getting more angry and upset and stressed out as the day wore on.

Where have I gone wrong? Because I'm sure that the responsibility for this particular issue lies squarely on my shoulders. I'm not doing this parenting thing right. Not that my kids would be perfect angels if I were doing it right, but holy cow, I'd like to think they'd show a little more respect.

Michael is back on chemo as of this morning. I know it's a good thing - all towards him getting well, but I swear when he came home with the fanny pack back on, I felt like crying. It was like, "Oh yeah . . . that." Because the last week while he's been off chemo, it's felt almost normal again, like cancer wasn't a part of our life. Now it's back to reality.

And I haven't slept - really slept - in . . . oh so long. I am up and down, up and down, all night, every night with Finn. He's already been up once screaming since I put him to bed tonight. And I don't feel that I can do any kind of sleep training with him because I suspect that there's actually a physical/medical issue at play here - namely, the fluid in his middle ears that I was told he has a couple weeks ago. Maybe I'm wrong, but until I find out for sure, I have to believe that coddling him at night is the best thing I can do for him right now. But it sure is hard. I'm sooooo tired. All the time.

Tomorow's another day.