notes sync issues

I'm having a terrible time with Notes.app and syncing across icloud to my ios and 2 macs... I'm using it for months now, and in general, it does ok, but every once in a while, it trashes a note, or simply deletes a note.

but now, it's gone real wonky- I have a note I started on my iphone, and another, different note on my MacBookAir, but they won't sync to each other. I have turned off/on notes in ios icloud... no luck. other existing notes sync just fine. I can add a letter to another, existing note, and it syncs almost immediately across all 3 devices.

any suggestions?