Another month, another tummy bug. Jack woke up painfully early on Wednesday morning, before Jared was even up for the day, and told Jared, "I'm not feeling so good." He proceeded to have a fairly awful and messy morning and stayed home from school for the next 3 days. I was distraught. Not only did we go through this painful song and dance already just last month, we were also coming off a 4 day weekend early in March, with a 9-day spring break happening at the end of March. What I didn't need in the middle of March was a 5-day sick weekend with everyone feeling terrible, messy, exhausted, and grumpy. But alas.
Jack went down first, and then Alice soon after. Tough times for my potty-training little girlie pop. I tripled down on hand washing and sanitization. Usually when sickness hits our home, I more or less have an attitude of, "Buckle up. The only way out is through." And resign myself to everyone in the family most likely catching the sickness and falling like dominoes. This time the feeling of violently throwing up and tossing and turning in a feverish fit all night was a little too fresh in my rearview mirror, and I determined not to go down without a fight. Jack went down on Wednesday, Alice on Thursday, and Jared ran out of a patient's room to vomit on Friday, then came home early. By Saturday afternoon, my hands were chapped from being washed every 3 minutes for 3 days, but I still wasn't sick and thought I had made it through unscathed. I think we know where this is going. Hooray--another blog post about sick symptoms!
Sunday morning I took a turn for the worse. Stomach cramps, exhaustion, muscle aches. By Sunday afternoon Jared was feeling well enough that we swapped positions and I took his place on bedrest. And it is from that bedrest that I am writing this blog post. I am holding onto hope that this is as bad as it's going to get for me and I won't progress to throwing up. I guess we'll find out tonight. Either way, I'm preparing to be unfit to write a blog post tomorrow, so drafting this post now seemed like my best bet for getting it up in time. I'm grateful the sickness has at least been staggered, instead of everyone going down at once.
And now, per usual, some pictures from our week:
^^Jack and Alice making a leprechaun trap before school on St. Patrick's day.
^^I completely forgot St. Patrick's day even existed, and unfortunately, kids these days have become accustomed to a leprechaun visiting their home to try and find gold on the morning of March 17. When Jack came home and his leprechaun trap remained untouched, his attitude became progressively more and more sour for the next few hours until it became absolutely unbearable. I told him it seemed like there was something wrong, and he could either tell me about it or draw a picture of what was bothering him. Homeboy isn't the best at communicating what's wrong with words (mostly just attitude), but he did draw this masterpiece to let me know he was very disappointed that no leprechaun had visited our house so far. We took a look in his trap and realized that, silly us, we had forgotten to leave some bait in there! We rounded up a few coins to attract the leprechaun, and while the kids were away at a park after Jared came home, the Leprechaun did indeed stop by, leaving a note and two pieces of candy that looked suspiciously like they may have been borrowed from a Valentine's stash. Mr. Leprechaun made up for it by turning all our milk green. That trickster!
^^Alice's language development has taken huge leaps over the past few weeks. Much to our dismay, she has started to call her beloved Lovey "Wuffy" instead of "Ah-ee." She has become very maternal and called me in after her nap one day to show me how cozy Lovey looked after she tucked her in.
Alice has also taken to playing "Baby" for a good chunk of each day. I am the baby and she is the mommy, nearly always. In general I like this game! But yesterday when I got her out of bed in the morning and put her on the ground, the first thing she said to me was "Thank you Baby" instead of her usual request of, "Mommy, baby?" So maybe I am just Baby now, permanently.
^^My favorite part of daylight savings is the sunset lining up with my evening walk in the hills. There is, weirdly, amazingly, an enormous herd of Elk who live near our neighborhood. Usually they hang out in the fields to the east of us or hide up in the mountains, but this week they nested in the hills just above our house, where me and Savvy take our walk. It was fun to see the imprints of where they had settled in to sleep in the previously tall grasses, and see their hoofprints (and poops) absolutely everywhere. They had moved on by the time we found this evidence, but it just feels really neat to know these majestic creatures are our neighbors.
^^Alice demanded to go outside on her sick day. There was no talking her out of it. My strategy when this happens (if I don't want to go outside) is to let her go out without her snow clothes on because I know she'll request to go back inside within 30 seconds. This strategy never worked on Jack but works like a charm with Alice. She did make the most of those 30 seconds in the snow though.
^^My lil baby caterpillar in her cocoon. For the 3 days Alice was sick, we went through an exhausting cycle of sob, poop, bath, cocoon, get dressed, throw up, bath again, repeat. All day. It's nice to have the perspective of having an older kid in the home during a week like this. It was sad to watch Jack be sick, but fairly hands-off for me in that he could manage his own messes and bodily needs, and I felt good about sending him to the basement to play computer games to distract him from his nausea and keep him quarantined away from us. Alice's sickness was much more hands on, but I know it won't be like this forever. I'm glad they're both feeling better now.
^^Alternate caption: Trimming bangs on a toddler is hard.
^^On Sunday no one was feeling great except Jack. We all required a nap. Jack refused a nap. He also refused to do quiet time. At one point I woke up, shocked that Jack had simply let us nap? Left us alone to do so? I stole out of my room to bust Jack at whatever mischief he was surely getting into, but I found him engrossed in a Friend magazine on the couch. It was adorable. I snapped this picture and tiptoed back to my bed. Love this oft-but-not-always-mischievous little boy.
