Well, just like every year, I have had, oh, um, three fully caffeinated beverages since the Yom Kippur fast ended. and usually, after appeasing the caffeine gods, I spend the remainder of my night – and early into the next morning – appeasing the insomnia gods. But not this year. Oh no. I will be asleep in about 8 minutes,despite being loaded up on the caffeine. This year was the first year I spent Yom Kippur nanny-less. and this is the first year I realize how goddamn fortunate I was to have a nanny to mind the monkeys so I could go to synagogue for part of the day and strike my chest and atone for my sins (including ditties like this) and spend the rest of the day avoiding my coffee headache by sleeeeeeping.

This year, my kids chose this particular day to rise early (Isabella graced us with her LOUD presence at 4:30 with a lovely “good morning, starshine. the earth says hello!” which at first I thought was absolutely amazing, because it’s from Hair, and she’s listened to it, maybe once. but then she told me that Willy Wonka says it too, and then I was less impressed and just plain old exhausted out of my mind) and be more ill-behaved, naggy, and annoying than I have ever seen them. EVER.

I mean, seriously, the three of them had a good 20-minute long fight arguing over which one of them would make the best squirrel and who had the best acorn-opening skills. I swear. really? REALLY? the only amusing part of this absurdity is the way my baby girl pronounces the word “squirrel” like (another totally random Willy Wonka reference! huzzah!) Veruca Salt. It’s all squee-rell sounding. ask Kristabella about it. She thinks Isabella’s slighty British accent is both curious and hilarious.

It was bad today, people. BAD. It was worse than when Isabella spilled her entire apple juice all over her mother on the flight home from Milwaukee and I spend the entire ride (well, when I wasn’t in the bathroom three times with her) sitting on many, many napkins and attempting to wipe down my sticky buns.

It was worse than that time at Fernbank when Isabella worked for a good 45 minutes building herself an entire town and before I knew it, Josh was CLIMBING UP THE BUILDINGS and announcing that he was going to Godzilla it.

“Ruuuun it’s Godzilla.”

“It looks like Godzilla but due to international copyright laws, it’s not.”

“Still, we should run like it is Godzilla.”

“Though it isn’t.”

(anyone? anyone?)

So, in short, today was a total disaster.

But at least now they’ll have something to atone for next year.