I’m not the first parent to clarify the difference between vacation and travel when it comes to going places with kids, and this isn’t the first time I’ve written about such on the blog. But today has been an interesting Day of Fallout, post-travel, that is usually reserved for when our kids stay somewhere without us and then come home. Except we all came home yesterday and apparently we all needed to exorcise some Fallout tendencies today.

It doesn’t help that our travel, which was six-ish days long, involved some unexpected high stress of a really sick baby. Thanks to Zorfan and ibuprofen, she bounced back remarkably quickly, but Ben and I had two nights out of five with extremely little sleep and clearly I’m still feeling that lack in the here and now.

It also doesn’t help that my here and now started bright and early this morning with an unnamed child coming in to ask me if it was time to get up yet to watch a show when unnamed child definitely knew that it was not yet time and if unnamed child had just left me the frick alone and gone to watch the show instead of asking to watch the show, unnamed child would have been in far less trouble than waking me up to ask such a ridiculous question in the first place.

Basically, the (mama) bear was poked early today and she was cranky as all get out for most of what followed. That might have been the case either way on our first full day at home, but wow. It was A Day.

To put it another way, I sent one of my Dear Ones a text that said: “Also, holy smokes. After trying to hold everyone’s shit together for six days away from home, I am a raging ducking batch today.”

And then we decided that wins the Best Autocorrect of all time and even though I have a headache from exhaustion, I’m feeling a little less rage-y around my house. A little less ducking batch, too.

So after getting the littlest two to bed, the Big 3 helped clear the yard and then settled down to a living room Reading Party. Even Mr. Lincoln who can’t yet read grabbed a book and a couch cushion and (sort of) quietly looked at pictures without asking (too many) questions.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot prettier than the rest of the day, so we’re going to go ahead and cling to that brighter spot at the end of a long haul and hope that tomorrow goes a little bit smoother and starts a wee bit later than today.