On the Third Day of Christmas

I am hiding out in bed, but the ducklings are still pretty occupied with new toys.

It looks like the ducklings finally did get over The Stomach Flu That Never Leaves. Then we got it. The good news was, it wasn't on the Friday that Ron had three court hearings (all of which he won) and I had an interview for a new contract (which I got). The bad news, it hit both of us at once all weekend. Their Majesties took the ducklings out to get a Christmas tree and D1 and D2 decorated it. D1 put all the glass balls in one spot, and D2 decided to add the packing peanuts. But they are happy with it.

We got a little better on Monday, enough to get out of bed and try to face the world. But not a lot better. D1 wrapped most of the presents. There's no tape left in the house, but the presents were good and covered.

Her Majesty did the Christmas baking I had promised to do while I stayed in bed all Christmas Eve, fighting a relapse. We made it up for Christmas, very very late.

DOB points out that we have a lousy Christmas every three years. Three years ago, the twins were on the way. Six years ago, we woke up Christmas morning at 3 a.m. to the infant D1 vomiting all over her pack'n'play. (And that was after driving hours through a blizzard to make it to the airport and then flying standby to get here.) By contrast, this was pretty tame. It's hard to have a really cruddy Christmas when you have kids old enough to participate and young enough to get excited over opening boxes, let alone what's inside.

I really hope it doesn't take us another four weeks to fully recover from this and get back to just being regularly exhausted. Now that I have two ongoing contracts, we are really hoping and praying we can hire someone able-bodied in here to help out soon. Umm, today maybe?

Uphill Both Ways

So about a month ago we had a little stomach bug run through the kids, not a huge deal although it did seem a bit much coming right on the heels of a big legal-education-project thingy for the grownups.

Then just as everyone was getting better from that and I was all set to get things back to normal, we had a big snowstorm that knocked everything out of commission until Thanksgiving. Then D1 had a regression of the stomach flu. Then we thought she was better.

Then she was suddenly much worse again, and got dehydrated to the point of complete listlessness, which if you know D1 is a shocking sight indeed. But she finally started to improve again, and then it took me several more days to begin to feel human again. Tending to sick children takes out of me all the things I don't have enough to spare of anyway, especially when it's administering tiny doses of fluids around the clock.

So Monday was the first day I started to feel decent, started to work and do school with the kids again. We've had a few social/professional events I've managed to sneak away and attend in all this. I was still pretty tired, but things were beginning to come back together.

Then today D4 started throwing up again. I have NO IDEA what is going on. The doctor we took D1 to thought it might be her system still unbalanced from the former illness and prescribed probiotics. I don't know where it's going to hit next or if that was the end of it. I do know I'm very, very tired of holding one cranky small person while trying to keep the other three fed and occupied.

I don't even want to THINK about how close Christmas is.