Please Stop Giving My Kids Crack

I don't know who keeps giving my kids crack, but whoever it is deserves a kick in the taco.  My kids have gone beyond their usual level of insanity lately; things are ratcheted up to the point where all four of my kids now have a 7:15 p.m. bedtime.

Seriously.  Tonight I really wished that I felt comfortable sharing their pictures on the blog, because I could have videotaped the ridiculousness, and that could have been my entire post.

All three girls were bickering in the bathroom while they were supposed to be brushing their teeth.  If they would actually brush their teeth during this time, we wouldn't have the bickering problem, because their mouths would be full of toothbrushes and strawberry-flavored gel.  Instead, they're chatty, but because they're tired and whiny, the chatting leads almost immediately to indecipherable bickering.

All I know is that someone may have made a face at someone else, and someone else may have made someone else feel bad.  And one of the someones really didn't know what she had done wrong, and that made someone else feel even worse.

Are you following this?  Me neither.  So I hollered "LESS CHATTY, MORE BRUSHY!" 

Also during this time, Little Dude was busy writhing around on the floor, making a sound that can only be described as ear-shredding, trying to avoid getting his pajamas on.

Okay, maybe no one is giving them crack.  I think it's just that the mere suggestion of cold and flu season makes them start melting down. It's kind of like how people say to make the driest martini, you just wave the bottle of vermouth over the glass.  To begin making my children fall apart, just have them walk near a sick person.

None of the kids is actually sick, in the sense of having a full-blown illness that requires us to visit the pediatrician.  However, Little Dude was congested enough for me to keep him home today.  The Peanut Butter Kid's asthma is acting up, so the day now revolves around nebulizer treatments.  The Pork Lo Maniac is dragging herself around, but if I kept her home every morning that she says she doesn't feel well, that kid would never go to school.  Ever. 

Meanwhile, Cookie is fine.  With the exception of the Great Swine Flu Debacle of 2009, she has not had a respiratory illness since her tonsils and adenoids were removed in second grade.  I keep asking the pediatrician if we can just electively yank those (apparently) unnecessary items out of the other three kids, but it seems you have to have "reasons" to put your kids through surgery.  Sigh.

But even though Cookie is fine, when the other three are cranky, it's hard for her to not become cranky as well.  And there are other weirdnesses going on as well.

When Little Dude is sick, it's like any other kind of stress.  His Asperger behaviors become much more pronounced.  There's more flapping, more need for deep pressure, more playing with one solitary Luke Skwalker Lego figure with his nose two inches away from tiny Luke. The smallest sensory experience (a few drops of juice on his fingers) sends him into a screaming freak-out.  Because he's already congested, the screaming freak-out quickly morphs into a fiesta of phlegm, snot, and asthma coughing.  And then he freaks out more because there is snot on his face.  The whole thing is really just delightful.

Besides the germ factor, he's also a little stressed about the holidays. Although he's starting to get excited that Christmas is coming, he's also clearly overwhelmed by the overabundance of shiny crap displays and decorations everywhere he looks. At Target the other day, he loudly observed that "people go crazy for holidays," and he repeats that heartwarming sentiment frequently.
And speaking of repeating himself, Little Dude has also been having some issues with echolalia (repetition of words and phrases) for the first time, or at least the first time that I've noticed.  He's been walking around chirping, "HONEST TO PETE!" at everything and nothing.

Obviously, it could be much, much worse than "honest to Pete."  He could be walking around muttering, "who gives these kids crack?"