Figures

Peyton spent most of last week sick as a dog. He was uncharacteristically cranky, he had a fever, and he just wanted to cuddle, when he wasn't trying to claw my eyes out. There was no telling when the loving cuddles would turn into eye clawing, so even though I love cuddles, I was more than a little flinchy when he would come over for some love. Seriously, he managed to draw blood from himself and his dad with his tantrums, clawing, and scratching. I'm lucky to be alive, people!
By some miracle, Sam did not catch it (and so far no one else has either, knock on wood), but because she was cooped up inside except for those blessed few preschool hours, and Peyton was in a shockingly bad mood, they basically spent five days at each others throats. Sam would get in his face, I would tell her to back off so she didn't make him mad or get sick herself, he would freak out and start screaming, and round and round we go. We pretty much didn't leave the house (or car for preschool dropoff/pickup) until Friday night. Wait, that's not actually true, on Thursday night, we tried to go to the store together for groceries, and that was simply a horrible experience that none of us want to remember or repeat. Although his symptoms were better, Peyton's mental state clearly was not. It was a ghastly couple of hours, and I was slightly traumatized, which is probably why I totally blocked it out.
To make matters worse, this just happened to be the rare Saturday Daniel was assigned to work a full shift, so by the time Peyton was feeling better on the weekend, I was so battle-weary and exhausted (see above ill-fated shopping trip) that I couldn't work up the energy or courage to take them anywhere that day either. Sunday was fine with church and stuff, but I had some extra meetings so we didn't go to grandmas like usual so it was pretty much another cooped-up day.
That brings us to today, which is technically a holiday, so no preschool for Sam, but too small a holiday for us to pass up a full day of overtime pay for Daniel, so once again, both kids, all day, no school, no reinforcements. One of Sam's friends called and asked her to come over and play. I almost kissed the mom, but I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize the playdate, so I refrained.
I dropped Sam off for a couple of hours and hopped back in the car, glad she could get some time for fun out of the house, and I could get some alone time with just Peyton, now that he's back to human behavior. I got back in the car and I hear a little voice behind me say "Where Sama go?"
"Sam went to play with a friend for a while." I said happily.
Peyton started to get sniffly and said "Sama friend? Sama back?"
I said "She'll be back soon. After lunch!"
Peyton geared up the pathetic voice and said "Want Sama back! Sama back!"  He whined the whole way home about wanting his Sama back.

Figures. He'd rather fight with her than get along with anyone else. It's a sibling thing.