Sick and Proud

Our house has been full of a lot of sickness.  Everyone has had something...... Cally was the first to go down, but she seemed to get right back up from a rogue fever with only a lingering cough.  John is still coughing from his close encounter of the flu variety, Hazen has had a fever here and there, and I succumbed to a sinus and ear infection in the beginning of the week.

Everything was looking up by the middle of last week.  I was on antibiotics and feeling better, John and Cally were both sleeping through the night again, and all seemed great..... until the middle of my third period class on Thursday when I got the dreaded call.  It was Tammy calling to say that Cally had thrown up at daycare.  My stomach instantly lurched and my deep seeded dread about these situations was upon me.  As I've mentioned before, John and I were both eager to have children.  I told him I'd pull my weight with the sleepless nights, the midnight and early feedings, nasty diapers, middle of the night steam showers for coughs, spit up, whatever.  I just wanted him to promise me that he'd deal with the real throw up.  He eagerly agreed, but as it turns out, it never really works out that I can duck away and let him deal with these situations alone-- one of us usually needs to deal with the kid while the other cleans up the mess.  And this case was no exception.  Because I work five minutes away from Tammy and John had evening obligations that night, there was no option but for me to deal with this one on my own.

When I arrived at Tammy's, she'd already cleaned up the mess and Cally was curled up on a chair in her snow pants (she'd gotten barf on her shoes, pants, and socks), she was pale as a ghost, and she smelled like vomit because it was in her hair and on her necklace.  I gave her a big hug, loaded her in the car (thankful that she wasn't likely to get sick in the seven minute drive home), and bathed her as soon as we were home.  I then lined the family room couch with towels, talked her through the feelings she had before getting sick at Tammy's so she could tell me if she was feeling that way again, and set her in front of the television while I deep cleaned the house in a way that I haven't in some time.  I'd recently heard an NPR story about how virulent and nasty this new strain of the norovirus is and I didn't want to take any chances with it.  As Cally slept and zoned out to children's shows on PBS, I swept, vacuumed, mopped, and sprayed 7th Generation disinfectant over any non fabric surface in the house.

By 4 pm, I realized that I was going to have to load her into the car to pick up Hazen.  This time I covered as many surfaces of my car as I could with spare towels and had Cally sit with a bucket in her carseat.  I gave her the pep talk about how much easier it is to clean up barf in a bucket or toilet and crossed my fingers that this dam would not crack.  We made that trip without a hitch, but then she told me she was hungry.  I was tempted not to let her eat, but figured I couldn't let her go hungry so I made her some toast with butter and had her drink a bunch of water.  She asked me to bring her to the bathroom about five times throughout the afternoon and early evening and nothing ever happened, but by 6pm, she had that "familiar feeling".  She managed to sit on the toilet and barf in the bucket.  I was able to rub her back and help her through something that I've always thought myself a failure.  This was a milestone for both of us!

Friday morning, school was cancelled because of what was thought to be the next big storm (but really wasn't) and Cal was feeling better in the belly, but complained of an ear ache.  She'd been complaining briefly about this for the past week, so I decided to get in to see her doctor.  She did have some fluid in her ears, but her doctor wasn't very worried about that.  He did take a moment to listen to her lungs and found that she has walking pneumonia!  This presented itself so differently that last year-- no fever and acting pretty darn perky.  So, while John dropped Hazey off with Tammy and John headed up to the mountain, Cal and I went to our favorite lunch soup spot and picked up her antibiotics. 

By Saturday morning she was feeling well enough to join her friends for a Valentine's Luncheon at Annie's house while Hazen hung out with Henry and a babysitter and the parents got out to enjoy a morning of skiing together in the new snow.

On Sunday, it was below zero when we woke up, so we decided against bringing the family to Sugarbush and decided to haul the kids up to Underhill State Park in the Chariot.  At the last minute, I asked Cal if she wanted to ski down the road when we got to the top.  She seemed eager.  We didn't want to push it, but stuck Cally's skies, boots, and helmet into the Chariot just in case.  A two mile, 1000 vertical skin up brought us to CCC Road/Sunset Ridge Trail intersection. Hazen had napped the whole way up, and Cal was all excited to ski down.  And so she did..... the entire way with only a little Daddy's assist on the flats.

She had a ball:

And even wanted to hit the highland lift at Smuggs with her friend Lottie for some laps in the sunshine.  They looked like racing starfish:

And after that, she still had the energy/mental capacity to read, yes read, her first book from cover to cover:  Hot Soup (it's six pages long)!  But after such a crazy week and weekend, we were really happy to be able to get everyone's health back (for the time being) and do what we love to do with our kids.