Returning to normal, snow day, Barbie

Aerin’s mostly normal following her hospitalization. She’s got a cold and is draining pretty bad, and we’ve had to suck snot out of her in order to allow her to drink without gasping, but otherwise in great spirits and singing the songs of her people at about 4am the past two days.
Yesterday morning at 3:48 Maggie woke up for the third time and was worried about monsters. This was the third time in two hours so I told her it was time to get up. This lead to a total meltdown, but by 4:30am we were up and prepped for school which opened at 6am.
I don’t generally want to take her in that early, but I was feeling sick (lung funk pre/post hospital,) and she was playing the “I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m scared, I need to go potty, I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to get up” game she has and I had slept a total of two hours at this point.
Got her ready, watched a little TV, then at 5:50 told her we were going to school. Maggie’s become an excellent manipulator as suddenly exhaustion hit her face and she said she wanted to just lay down on the couch. Errr, no, that ship sailed.
Got her into the car seat and she said “daddy, i just want to close my eyes,” and I said “go for it, you’ve got 10 blocks to daycare.” mean sounding yes, accurate also.
We got to daycare two minutes later and I dropped her off with the only person there with instructions for them to call me if she needed to come home. I needed two hours of sleep, but would be fine picking her back up about 8am were she actually tired. I’m told she wasn’t and that it was a normal day.
When she got home she was in a good mood. At 7:40 or so she said “Daddy put me to sleep,” without prompting. She’d just finished eating and decided it was her bedtime. I said ok and as she was walking toward the crib she stopped and said “I’m so hungry!” – I pointed at the food still left on her plate and she giggled and said no, and wandered back to bed. Freakin’ lying toddler.
I read her Goodnight Moon, which she’s come to demand every night, and then Elmo’s Space Pizza book which she shredded as a child and I have to piece together every time to read. She passed out hard. Aerin passed out shortly thereafter.
4:30am or so Aerin woke up and was hungry. This is normal. Usually we plug her full of milk and she goes back to sleep. Unfortunately due to sinuses this doesn’t work at the moment. Feeding her is a balancing act of getting snot out, milk in. So she was awake then.

Maggie woke up a few minutes later. It was a snow day. Woot. Well, woot for them. Maggie demanded to see her monster movie, which is Hotel Transylvania 2. She watched it with her sister for a bit. As a note, I don’t know how she can stand the movie with how many times she’s watched it. Seriously amazes me.
I had to bail and head off to work to fix a server, but I was basically it this morning. Not so much now.
My drive into work was sure fun
Yesterday Maggie also got a Barbie in the mail. She’s been talking about Barbie for a few weeks now, and now she has what we call Google Engineer Barbie with Bad Fashion Choice of the night as she’s dressed in something entirely inappropriate for day to day operations at Google, which is where she works damn it.
All my kiddos are at home with the wife, and I’ve got a couple more things to do at work while nobody is here, and all I can think of is that Robert Frost poem about the little horse and the snow.