The Annual Disease

So every year, sometime in the early spring, we get sick.  I've never understood exactly why this is -- why not in the winter when everyone is stuck in inside and all the windows are closed all the time and germs have ample opportunities to spread?  No, it's always as soon as the weather starts turning warm again.  Perhaps it's because "spring" in The Commonwealth of Virginia means "that season when the weather can't decided whether it's still winter or summer yet."  So maybe the constant flip-flopping between 80-degree days and 40-degree days -- as well as the days when you go from heat to A/C back to heat, all in one day -- take a toll on our fragile immune systems.

At any rate, just when I thought I'd dodged the bullet this year, the baby got sick.

:(

There is nothing, no nothing, more pathetic than a sick baby.  Just wookit dat widdle face.  It's saddest because nursing, which is normally such a calming and nourishing time, becomes an exercise in frustration and mild panic -- since a baby with a stuffy nose keeps suffocating when he's trying to eat.

The illness made it through all the ranks.  This year's symptoms were high fever accompanied by debilitating lethargy.  (Only a couple brief cases of intestinal upset, praise be.)  Mr. Pickles, hero that he is, took a few days off work to make sure we didn't all starve to death.

Our living room was converted into a sick ward. I was tempted to put a big yellow flag on our door.

Andy's fever got as high as 105, which was scary.  Mr. Pickles had to take him to the pediatrician post-haste, since I was completely useless, being borderline delirious myself.  He didn't have strep, thank goodness.  But the fever lasted for almost a week so we had to take him to get bloodwork done.  That wasn't as horrible as it could have been -- he was a regular little champ.  And it turns out his iron levels were really low!  Surprising, since he is our resident carnivore.  The low iron levels were making it hard for his widdle system to fight off the infection, so after yet another doctor visit we were assigned the fun and enjoyable task of trying to get a picky three-year-old with a healthy gag reflex to take those yummy pink antibiotics, twice a day, for the longest 10 days of my life.   (We finally had success disguising it in strongly-flavored fruit smoothies -- honestly, I think he was objecting to the disgusting artificial fruity flavoring.)  We were all leaping for joy on that 10th day, let me tell you.

We are also giving him iron supplements, which as anyone who has had to take the liquid version knows are vile, but which we have learned he will take cheerfully in plain ol' apple juice.  (but not orange juice)  (remember, picky 3yo)  I guess all this explains why his favorite breakfast is an omelet with spinach.  (and salsa, the weirdo)

Well, after about two weeks we all finally got better.  Aaaaaaaand then the baby got sick again. :(  But thankfully, the cycle stopped there.  Miraculously, Mr. Pickles didn't catch it! 

Boy, nothing makes you believe in the fallen state of nature like being sick as a grownup.  It is NO FAIR.  When you feel lousy, you have to hobble into the kitchen and make your own broth and get your own medicine and rinse out your own sick bowl and wash your own sheets -- PLUS do all those things for everyone else who's sick, too!  And your unsympathetic beast of a five-year-old coming up to you when you're wrapped around your sickie bowl desperately trying to keep body and soul together, and saying "I'm hungry!  What can I have to eeeeeeeat?"

Part way into my recovery I posted this on Facebook:

"I just want to take a moment to go down on my knees publicly and thank my mother for all the hours she nursed us when we were sick. Yes, I was an ungrateful wretch who didn't care how she was feeling and certainly did not fully appreciate her sacrifices and hard work at the time. Well, I'm appreciating the HECK out of it now. Thank you, [Mommy]!"

And also, thank you Mr. Pickles for working so hard to keep everyone fed (a Herculean task) until I became fully human again!

I'm also grateful for generally good health in our family -- I know so many families who are suffering through chronic disease or unexplained health problems.  Anemia, or even food sensitivities, are nothing compared to that.

Back to reality.

So!  Postpartum!

After that beautiful, amazing birth, the week of recovery was one of peace and delight and happy joyful family times, right?

all riiiiiiight! (4 days old)

Ha.

A good reminder

from Pleasant View Schoolhouse, one of the "Mommy blogs" in my Google Reader:


Advice for young moms? Honey, it's different for you. Don't expect to be able to do everything during these days. These days are the most challenging parenting you'll do. Keep up with the laundry, feed your family fresh vegetables, sweep the floor when you have to, get some fresh air, and try, try, try to do a little something creative every day. You'll feel so much better.


I really needed to hear this. Most days I feel like this whole homeschooling mom thing is a superhuman task, and I often go to bed discouraged, mulling over all the things I didn't do on a given day. I know it will get easier, and soon, but that's small comfort when I look around and see all the dust and clutter building up, and feel like a failure of a homemaker -- or when I have to forgo playing with the littles because the laundry is starting to back up or I have to plan lessons or make necessary phone calls I've been putting off for weeks. There is nothing harder or more personally demanding than being a mother of small children, a homemaker, and a homeschooler all in one. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage my time so that I fulfill all my duties reasonably well (I'm so beyond expecting perfection) and yet have occasional opportunities to be creative and thereby refresh my spirit. It's hard when I live in the completely unreasonable terror of CPS knocking on the door and determining that I am unfit to keep these children because they have jam on their faces, or the floor hasn't been vacuumed yet this week, or there are dirty finger smudges all over the walls. Yes, unreasonable, I know. To each his own nightmare. I've never handled criticism well, so living in fear of being judged by an authority with disastrous consequences is just one of the many subconscious manifestations of that ever-present maternal guilt. (We all know we could be doing better, right?)

I think I need to get out of the house more.

A Week in the Life

So how was your week last week? Get lots of work done? Play with your pets? Meet anyone new? Good, good. Glad to hear it. Well, we had a busy week. Here are some pictures that Miriam drew of what we did. Can you guess?


If you said "spent three hours in the emergency room on a Saturday evening" you would be correct!!

She was running. It had rained. It was muddy. She slipped. A rock or stick or something jumped up and bit her in the leg. It was deep. She screamed a lot. We cleaned it out and called the pediatrician, who recommended bringing her to the emergency room to check it out. So we had to put all our other plans on hold (poor Mr. Pickles had to cancel his "pizza and a guy movie" guys' night). Fortunately it was slow at the emergency room, so we didn't have to wait long for any one period, just lots of little waiting periods.

The nurses were very nice.


They numbed her leg with a special cream (see the poultice on her leg, pictured above), then cleaned out the cut with a nifty syringe thingy:


Then the attending doctor stitched it up (4 stitches in the back of her thigh). Sorry I don't have any pictures of that. But you can view Miriam's rendition, also above.

Miriam was a little trooper through the whole thing. After the initial trauma of being injured was over, she was very stoic, if not downright curious, about the whole thing. After all, this was her first trip to the emergency room. She was mostly concerned about how much the needle would hurt when she was being stitched up. (It didn't -- she was numb.) And then afterwards, she took great delight in describing the whole ordeal to anyone who would listen.

She got the stitches taken out this past Friday and everything is healing up nicely. Now we're just waiting for the bill.

In other financial news this week, we had to take the car in to get the rear windshield wiper fixed, after it had been mauled by a neighborhood kid. While it was in the shop, the rear brake lights stopped working for some mysterious reason. A one-day fix turned into a multi-day carless streak. They finally gave us a loaner after we whined and pleaded and begged so that at least our family life could function (you remember we have only the one car). The loaner was a "mini-minivan." So, technically, it could seat 7 people. In theory. And assuming they were all the size of Katie. As it was, the 3 carseats were pretty packed in there. And we had no trunk space. So no major grocery shopping allowed.

We FINALLY got the van back, all fixed, huzzah huzzah, on Monday. Mr. Pickles had to take off of work early, before they closed (we just missed them by 20 minutes the previous Saturday, rizza frazza grrrrr), since I had to run an errand that evening.

Meanwhile, I was trying to plan how to attend this year's big homeschool conference that I'd been looking forward to since I missed LAST year's conference. When I got the news that our car was out of commission, I despaired. How was I going to attend the conference AND get Miriam to the doctor, with no car? Or even with one car? Well, Providence intervened in the form of my cousin Martin who flew in to man a booth at the conference. (Yay JP Catholic!) He had a rental car, so I carpooled in with him, and Mr. Pickles hauled all the kids to the doctor's. But since I couldn't stay all day, I had to scramble around and beg for an early ride home, but again I providentially bumped into a friend just as she was getting ready to leave. The next day I had free reign with the car, went to the conference, spent lots of money (of course!), and brought home some great books. Oh, did I mention that Mr. Pickles was sick this whole time? He very generously and self-sacrificingly made it possible for me to attend the conference even though he was feeling lousy. Isn't he great? I don't deserve him. He handles sickness much better than I do -- I get so whiny and pouty!

Anway, speaking of whining, where was I? Emergency room, car, stitches, conference, I guess that's it. Oh, in good news, Joseph is a healthy 15-month-old, and he didn't react from his MMR vaccine on Monday, plus I found a swimsuit that I actually sort of kind of like that even fits and stuff, although it makes me look like the Queen of Hearts. But back to our regularly scheduled whining: this Friday I'll be bringing Joseph back to the pediatric dentist to make sure he doesn't have nerve damage from when he cracked his tooth (I already blogged about that, didn't I?). I've also begun the mad scramble to get ready for vacation, which includes, but is not limited to, errand-running, extra shopping, finishing up 3 sewing projects, conquering mountains of laundry, vacuuming popcorn and granola off the dining room floor several times a week, catching mice in the kitchen, catching gerbils in the living room (Joseph has discovered how to open their cage), making to-do lists, making packing lists, making lists of lists, and in general feeding 4 hungry people at various times throughout the day.

So now you all know why I haven't blogged in a while.

And why I plan to spend two weeks on a beach in California drinking Bellinis every day.


Or mimosas.

I'm not picky.