Sick of Being Sick

Um, yeah.  So the blogging's been a little sporadic lately.

Every time I sit down to write a post, all I can come up with is something along the lines of, "Kid A is sick with _________" or "Now Kid B's come down with ________" and since I know that everyone else's kids are sick too, I feel like there's no need to add to the misery.

But that is seriously the only things I've had to talk about for the last three months.  Someone in my house has been sick since the middle of December.  So instead of individual posts about each kid and their various ailments and my misery at having to schlep them to the doctor's and wiping up their vomit/washing out their ruined underwear I thought I'd post one giant "We've all been sick and miserable" entry and be done with it.

So there was my stomach bug over our 10th anniversary in December.  Sydney had a touch of that one, too, but thankfully was out of school on break so didn't miss anything.

Then I caught a horrible cold in January.  And Evan had his tear duct surgery; I'm so behind that those pictures are still on the camera.

In February, I came down with strep throat.  And then Liam got strep throat, too.  Then Sydney got some sort of stomach bug and missed her class's Valentine's party and ruined her chances of the Perfect Attendance Award since that was the first day of school that she'd missed all year.  And then Liam seemed to catch her same stomach bug while on their monthly camping trip, but after three days of watching him carry around his "throw-up bowl" and waiting for him to get over it, he started coughing really hard and I took him to the doctor where we found out that it was not a stomach bug, but strep (again) and the poor boy had pneumonia, too.  His little chest was black and blue from all the coughing.

February turned into March and Evan began running a fever.  I called the pediatrician begging for some strep throat antibiotics because, hello!, his brother just had it and I'd rather not make him sit in that cesspool of germs known as the waiting room, but noooooooo........, we had to drive all the way into The Big City (because we haven't switched pediatricians yet) just to have his throat swabbed and "make sure" that's what it was and whaddya know, it turns out that yes, he did have indeed have strep, too.  The pedi was all apologetic about not trusting me, but I know deep down she just wanted another $40 co-pay out of us.  And once both boys finally started feeling better, Sydney woke up yesterday throwing up and having some, in her words, "squirty poop" so back to the pediatrician's office we went today for another strep test.  Hers came back negative so they're sending it to another lab to get more money out of us for further testing and we came home with instructions to treat it like rotovirus which means at least two more days of clear liquids and crackers and no school until she's vomit/squirty poop/fever free.  Who knows when that will be, but it better be soon because I have exactly two weeks to read two books for book club, prepare curriculum for this summer's Vacation Bible School and I'd really like to pull the rest of the wallpaper off of my kitchen walls and I can't do any of that with all of these sick kids!!

To add insult to injury, our trees are starting to bloom with pollen so I give myself about five days before I've got a sinus infection.

See?  Loads of fun in the Dress-up and Diaper Changes household for the past few months.

But!!  Next week is Spring Break and if everyone is well, we've got lots of fun things planned, including a trip to The Big City's gigantic Livestock Show and Rodeo.  That should make for a good blog post or two and lots of pictures of my kids reacting to the sights, sounds and lovely smells of various farm animals.

Of course, in order to see those pictures, I'll have to find the time to take them off the camera.  So I'm guessing you'll get to see them sometime in the middle of April.   :)