Sitting with my kids

We have had a string of illnesses here at Chez HOK that has left me reeling. Ella was sick last Thursday and Friday - I sent her to school on Friday only to have her teacher call me, sigh. Campbell woke up at 3:00am on Sunday with croup, which is always fun. I particularly enjoy sitting in front of an open freezer in the middle of the night with a sobbing preschooler. Then, to add insult to injury, Elizabeth spiked a fever Tuesday night and started coughing.

As a result, I've spent much of the past 7 days with a child in my lap. Even though Ella is approaching the age where she won't want to admit she knows me in public, she does still love to be mother-henned when she's sick. And Campbell and Elizabeth both turn into Velcro babies when they don't feel well.

Instead of letting myself get upset at the amount of work that needs to be done around the house and the amount of paying work I've fallen behind on, I've decided to enjoy these quiet days of snuggling and loving.

My babies are growing up so fast, as is evidenced by the fact that Ella doesn't even fit on my lap, and I need to treasure the quiet moments. Plus, being a mom is my primary job - ahead of vacuuming and doing laundry and writing continuing education modules for doctors. Nothing in my life right now is more important than taking care of my sick kids.

That having been said, if one more child gets sick, I may just lose my mind.

The day started out so well

Warning, blatant mommyblogger post ahead. And gross stuff.

My day really did start out very well. I got out the door before dawn for a four-mile run and finished before any of the kids woke up. I got Lily up and moving for breakfast without her waking up Campbell in the process. And I even managed to get her out the door without her crying a single time.

After that, I checked my e-mail and found out that one of my posts had been picked up by Deep South Moms Blog.

Next up, I broke the news to Ella that I had let her sleep in because she had a doctor's appointment for her severe allergies. Ella views going to the doctor as punishment, so she gave me the silent treatment all through breakfast.

And that's when things started going wrong.

Ella was in a bedroom playing with Campbell, when she yelled that there was a problem. Turns out he had pooped in his pants, and it had fallen out on the floor. Once I got Campbell and the floor cleaned up, I had yet another talk with him about how we don't poop in our pants.

A few minutes later, Elizabeth fell over and started screaming. I picked her up and sat on the sofa to comfort her, and she promptly threw up all over the two of us and my hand-knit blanket. At first, I thought maybe she had thrown up because she was crying so hard. But after she'd quieted down, she threw up again. Le sigh.

I got us both cleaned up and sat Elizabeth on the sofa in a nest of towels, only to discover that Campbell had pooped in his pants AGAIN.

That's when I started cursing.

So I cleaned him up AGAIN and tossed all the vomit- and poop-covered clothing and towels in the wash.

And that's when Elizabeth threw up all over the place again.

Sonofabitch.

I escaped the mess to take Ella to her doctor's appointment. He loaded her up with some new allergy medicines, including a nasal spray that I just know we're going to have to pin her down to use. My plan was to drop her off at school on the way home, but in the car she started complaining that her head hurt. So I let her come home with me. Of course, she's been pinging around the house like nothing's wrong. The plus side is that she's been keeping Campbell very entertained.

It's 1:30 and Elizabeth is asleep with a fever. She hasn't thrown up in hours, but I'm not letting my guard down yet. The day is still young.

That didn't take long

We've only just begun our third week of school and already all three kids have been sick. It certainly didn't take long for the bugs to start being shared.

Campbell started the trend last Wednesday afternoon by spiking a fever of 103.5. It came down relatively quickly with Advil, but he was a mess the rest of the day. At 9:00 pm he woke up fussing, and I checked his temperature - 104.1. Time for more Advil. His fever broke at about 1:00 am, and he woke up Thursday morning without a temperature. Unfortunately, he was a cranky, clingy kid the rest of the day.

Friday afternoon Ella came home from school saying she was tired. I should have known something was wrong, because the child will NEVER admit to being tired. She had a birthday party that evening, and I asked if she was too tired to go, and of course she said no. I chalked her tiredness up to her first rock climbing team practice the night before. She climbed for two hours and then didn't get to bed until later than usual. I explained all this to the birthday girl's mom when I dropped Ella off and headed to another party with Lily. When I picked Ella up two hours later, she was mostly asleep on the sofa, despite the commotion of the party. As soon as we got in the car, she started sobbing that her head hurt. I took her temperature when we got home - 103.5. No wonder she had been so droopy before the party. I felt awful for sending her off to the party without noticing she was sick.

Ella spent most of Saturday flat on the sofa watching movies. But she rebounded with a vengeance Saturday night, bouncing off the walls with energy. She's been fine ever since.

However, it's Lily's turn now. She started complaining of a headache Sunday afternoon. So I took her temperature - 100.3 - and gave her Advil. She and I took a three-hour nap in my bed, but she was still complaining of a headache when she woke up. Today she's at home, flat on the sofa. She doesn't have a high fever, but she obviously doesn't feel well. So she's missing school and her first ballet class of the fall. I haven't even mentioned that to her because I know it will cause buckets of tears.

My hope is that neither B nor I come down with whatever this is. Although, you would think that after three kids we would have become immune to pretty much whatever they bring home.

In the meantime, we'll have another quiet day of watching PBS and drinking Sprite.

The best 15 minutes of my day

It's been a day for the books, that's for sure. Nothing big has gone particularly wrong, but little things have piled up on me, to the point that I've almost been in tears several times today.

Campbell is continuing his destructo-baby phase, and he is demolishing the house a piece at a time. His favorite thing is to play in our kitchen pantry, which doesn't have a door on it, so I have no way of closing it off to him. I came around the corner to see him in the process of throwing out every single thing on the bottom shelf of the pantry. He was so proud of himself. Later in the day he got his hands on a box of 200 zip-lock sandwich bags and shoved about 100 of them into the recycling bag. I'm finding it impossible to baby proof for him, because he does things I never in my wildest dreams think he would do.

As the day progressed, I started feeling worse and worse -bad enough that I took my temperature. At 5:00 it was 100.1, which is high for me. I almost never run a fever, not even the time I had mastitis and the time I had a sinus infection.

I still managed to put dinner on the table, and that's when I really lost it. B and I are big proponents of family dinner time. We really believe in the value of everyone gathering at the table to share stories of the day and visit. After tonight's dinner, however, I think I may be switching to an every-man-for-himself dinner plan.

Ella wasn't sitting properly in her chair, and just as I was about to ask her to sit correctly, she managed to flip her plate over and onto the floor, hitting her lap and her chair on the way down. Great hilarity among the kids ensued. B and I weren't as amused. Just as we got Ella focused on her task of cleaning up the mess, Lily knocked over her cup of milk, covering the table. She and Ella had another good laugh at the mess before Lily headed off to get a towel to wipe everything up.

At that point I asked to be excused.

But I didn't get away without one more problem. As I was getting Campbell out of his seat to take him to bath time, he chucked his cup of water off the table, hitting Ella, who was lying on the floor still cleaning up her mess, square in the back. Campbell thought it was hysterical; Ella, not so much.

Campbell had a blast in the tub, as he usually does, and I called my mom so that she could listen to the racket he was making. It was fun and games until he leaned over to pick up a toy and donked his already bruised head on the side of the tub. Sigh.

Finally, after wrestling him into jammies, Campbell and I snuggled down on the sofa for his bedtime cup of milk. And that's when he did something he hasn't done since he stopped nursing - he just cuddled with me. When he was done with his milk, he handed me his cup, and I prepared for the usual wriggling that follows his evening drink. Instead, he just laid here, head on my shoulder. I scootched down on the sofa so that I was stretched out, and we just snuggled. It was the calmest 15 minutes I've had all day. I could have easily fallen asleep like that - feeling the rise and fall of his chest, smelling his wonderful baby hair. I think he might have drifted off if it hadn't been for his sisters, who picked that moment to come crashing into the living room to tell on each other.

Sigh.

I put Campbell in his crib and dangled over the rail for a minute just stroking his back as he drifted off. I wish every day could end so calmly. It made up for all the mess and noise of the day. Now if I could only find a way to not get sick.

Mooching a sick day

At four this morning I woke up to Ella barfing all over my bathroom. She had climbed down from her bunk and run all the way back to our room, only to not quite make it to the toilet. She has apparently caught the bug Campbell had earlier in the week.

She threw up a couple more times this morning, and I've cleaned up more barf than I care to think about because it makes me gag (both the cleaning and thinking).

Of course I kept Ella home, crossing my fingers that her bout would be as short-lived as Campbell's, which lasted all of four hours. Ella's birthday is tomorrow, and we've got a big party planned at the neighborhood park. It's a field day - egg tosses, tug-of-war, three-legged races, dizzy bat relay, the works. We've invited everyone from her class, and even though I asked for an RSVP, only three families have done so. Cancelling the party would mean getting a phone list from Ella's teacher since the school directory isn't out yet, and calling every family. Bleah. I figure that if she gets to noon without throwing up again, we can invoke the "24 hours without throwing up" rule and have the party.

I kept Lily home today, too. First of all, I just didn't have the energy to load her and Campbell in the car, and I didn't want to have to drag poor sick Ella along for the ride. Second, if you had asked me which of my kids would get sick next, I'd have picked Lily without hesitation. She's been acting puny the last two days and has barely eaten a thing. So I figured I'd keep her home just in case she started throwing up too. Plus I didn't want to send her to school to infect her friends.

As a result, Lily is thoroughly enjoying Ella's sick day of watching cartoons on the sofa under the "sick" blanket. I'm guessing she won't like it nearly as much though when I tell them they both have to take rest time during Campbell's afternoon nap.

Here's hoping that Ella gets better in time for tomorrow and that Lily doesn't get the bug next.