Today was one of those days when I started checking the clock at 11am to see if it was time for my husband to come home.

Both of our kids have been sick–the puking, fever, diarrhea sick–and stuck in the house for almost a week now. The 2.5-year-old was much better today and probably could have/should have gone to daycare.

How do I know he’s better? Because he spent the day hitting, kicking, throwing, refusing to nap and coming up with other fun ways to channel his “I’ve been in the house all damn winter” frustration. Meanwhile, the 1-year-old is still vomiting and having diarrhea explosions. And I’m running on fumes after several nights of changing vomit-filled sheets and playing with bath toys at 2am.

Which made my job as a mom incredibly trying today.

I hate how I feel during days like these. It reminds me how I felt all last winter, when I was (unknowingly) living through postpartum depression and anxiety–cagey, unable to leave the room for fear of someone (aka my baby) getting hurt, and like I don’t have the creative reserves as a mother to know how to turn the situation around.

The difference between today and how I felt last year, though, is my ability to recognize that I’m in the middle of a tough day. I’m now able to see above the chaos, even when I’m in the middle of it. To think to myself,  “What would turn this situation around? What does this moment need?”

Unfortunately all the (pretty cool) things I came up with today didn’t turn the situation around. What’s the message in this? What’s the lesson?

All I know so far, 15-minutes after handing off the screaming bundles to my husband and hightailing it upstairs to sit in the dark, is this:

Some days are tough.

Some days will feel like living inside of a tornado all day long.

Some days you’ll have a toddler throwing rocks at the glass door while the other one is puking and crapping all over himself in the playroom.

All you can do is try to stay calm, try not to yell, and do your best trying to figure out who to attend to first. And hope you have the blessing of getting another go at it next time.