Well.

The food was good.  Really good, if I do say so myself.  And judging by the very reasonable amount of leftovers in the fridge, I finally seem to have hit a sweet spot on quantity.  I started cooking early in the day (with some assistance), and cooked on and off until the final push to finish everything at about 5.  Really not bad.

My dad and stepmom were in town, and I almost felt bad that there was so little I needed by way of food prep assistance.  But hey, they were there to take the kids out for a walk while they were going stir-crazy before lunch, so that in itself is a big help.  And, really, they were just there to see the grandkids.  And see them, they did.  Daniel, especially, seems to just love the extra attention and was on full funny/cute overload.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the rest of the day (or week) was such a great success.  It was cold and rainy, so no outdoor activities.  Rebecca has been miserable and sick and over-tired the whole week (today marked 4 straight days of wailing and flailing with a side of fever and runny nose).  Unpleasant, at best.  She is a pretty demanding child when sick (I will admit she may have gotten that from me), but she feels so rotten that she has no idea what she wants.

“I want oatmeal!
NO OATMEAL!
I want TV.
NOOOO Sesame Street!
I want to sit on the chair.
NOOOOOOOOOO!  NO CHAIR NO CHAIR!
Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh……

I feeling sad right now.”

It’s exhausting.

The kids briefly sat with us for dinner, though there was a lot of demanding to get down, and a lot of “I don’t yike it” when suggestions were made to try anything but the cranberries.  Rebecca had yogurt for dinner. Daniel eventually discovered a love for Pumpkin Bread Pudding and, while devouring his serving and that of the person next to him, exhibited a focus I’d never previously seen.  He is my child, after all.

At any rate, Dad and Stepmom are headed home in the morning, and I can only hope Rebecca gets over this virus and doesn’t pass it along to her brother (a girl can dream).  It’s been, quite frankly, a nightmare. Especially since I feel pretty confident that there is nothing to be done but wait for it to run its course.

Alas.  At least the food was good.

The kind where M comes up to bed at [who knows what ungodly hour] and says “you’re probably in for a rough day tomorrow. Rebecca has been crying off and on all night, and every time I go in to check on her, Daniel is awake.”

The kind where I have to fumble around in the dark at 5:30am to administer a dose of Children’s Motrin.

The kind where it takes an hour to calm down the sick, upset child enough to convince her to come downstairs.  With the promise of TV, and the highly unusual treat of breakfast in the living room.

The kind where she won’t agree to take off her sleep sack and change her soggy diaper until 10am.

The kind where you can’t really do anything, so you take the really out-of-the-way route from the drive-thru Starbucks to the random errand, just to get out of the house.

The kind where lying down actually makes her feel worse, so she wakes up burning and miserable from her nap.

The kind where, up on retrieving her from the sad end of nap, you decide to attempt a snuggle in the rocking chair to settle down before starting the afternoon, and she passes out on your shoulder for 45 minutes.  The sort of thing she hasn’t done for probably a year and a half.

The house is still a mess, and my dad and stepmom arrive in a little over an hour.  I hereby throw up my hands and cry uncle, and beg them to help me.  And help, they will.  They’re good like that.

Happy almost Thanksgiving.  Yeesh.

Things have been kind of quiet here, I know. For one thing, I was hit for the fourth (or billionth) time by some kind of stomach bug and am only just coming back to life. Note to self: wipe down the entire house in bleach, since I think I keep getting the same virus over and over again.

But, when not dealing with such unpleasantness, I’ve also been very busy with things like this:

And this:

And this:

More to come on that, shortly. I swear. If I can actually finish what’s in the first picture…

In the meantime, are you ready for Thursday Theater tomorrow?

Apparently Winter decided it needed to give me one more swift kick in the ass.  I can only hope this is its last hurrah before Spring finally decides to show up.  Let’s review the last week:

Saturday: I woke up sick, spent pretty much all day in bed.  My achy legs and arms felt like limp spaghetti.  I had some cute visitors in my cave guest room, but otherwise M took the kids all day.

Sunday: Felt better, M not so much.  We traded, he spent much of the day in bed.

Monday: Snowed in, stayed inside all day long and managed not to kill anyone.

Tuesday: Stir-crazy, took kids to a playspace just so we could get out.  Rebecca started feeling crappy while we were out.  When we got home to Daddy, she managed to projectile vomit, just for him.

Wednesday: Rebecca still a little off, felt like it was the right thing to skip our music class.  More time at home.  Went for a walk in the freezing cold, just so we could leave the house.  Rebecca was not such a fan.

Thursday: I was excited to go to our regular Thursday class and make up our skipped music class.  Except when I went to get them out of bed, Daniel’s crib contained a really lovely treat: blueberry vomit.  Cancelled all plans for the day.  Did more laundry.  Oh, and M felt so crappy that he spent the whole day in bed.  Didn’t even get up for fresh chocolate chip cookies.

Friday: Whew, it’s just a 24-hour bug, so we’ll get to go to gymnastics, right?  Um, no.  Daniel woke up lethargic and puked up his milk.  Plus, I spent most of the day trying not to puke, myself.  Climbed into bed for kids’ naptime, and again the moment M walked in the door.  Not sure which is worse: being healthy and taking care of sick toddlers, or being sick and taking care of healthy toddlers.  Both suck.

And, honestly, this all really felt like it was on the heels of the suckiest vacation ever, which I really hadn’t yet recovered from.  It’s just all feeling like entirely too much.

Thank god, today we all seem to be better.  No puking.  Sun came out and it hit nearly 60 degrees.  Please, oh please let this be the end of Winter.  Clocks change tonight, let’s hope that smacks things into line.  At least now we have puddles to play in.  It still means daily laundry, but I’d take muddy jeans over puke-y pajamas any day of the week.

Dear Winter:

Bite Me.

And, it continues. Rebecca was kind enough to wait until Daddy got home last night before she did her own interpretation of Exorcist baby.  Blessedly no repeats of the upchucking yet, but she’s a touch on the pale side, is occasionally sporting a blue hue to her lips, and let’s just say the diapers have been special.  Yes, I’m pushing fluids and feeding her things like rice, applesauce, and bananas.  Fingers crossed that this passes quickly and (ha! yeah, right!) stays away from her brother and the rest of us.

In the meantime, one more reminder to get your video clips ready for tomorrow’s inaugural Thursday Theater!  It doesn’t have to be award-worthy, it doesn’t have to be perfect.  It doesn’t have to be more than 30 seconds long.  But it’s my new weekly feature, in the hopes of encouraging each other to get better at documenting things in sound and motion, not just fixed pixels.

See you tomorrow!  I’m off to wash more laundry.  This load has such as special aroma, I only wish I could share it with you.  Seriously, come on over.  Help?

Well, this one was really a doozy.  As I mentioned before I left, I was feeling mixed about this trip before it even started.  Warm weather sounds great, but I was not looking forward to the travel or being in someone else’s space.

[Forgive the outrageous number of photo mosaics to follow... I had an awful lot of pictures to share! If you want to see full size versions, click on the mosaic and it will take you to Flickr, where it will link to the individual photos.]

We were there less than 24 hours before Daniel was clearly sick.  Poor kiddo, not a fun way to spend vacation.  But he’s a really sweet kid even when sick, and he was clearly trying to power through and put on a good face. We went to the park, we went to the zoo.

My mother-in-law, who has completely forgotten that she spent her entire child and adult life in New Jersey and Connecticut, is now one of those crazy Florida people who keep the thermostat set at 80 and apologize that the kids won’t be able to play outside because it’s so cool.  It was 73.  I insisted that they change out of the sweatpants and long-sleeved shirt that she had chosen, into shorts like normal human beings. (Especially ones who had just left New England, with it’s weather in the teens and over a foot of snow on the ground.)

Unfortunately, on Monday, Daniel was not sounding any better.  The cough and wheezing was sticking around. Finally, after he clearly wasn’t sleeping (very unlike him), M took him back to the doctor.  Diagnosis: one rather nasty ear infection.  Tuesday was rough.  Bad sleep, and my poor happy guy had run out of happy juice. Cranky, tired, running a fever.  And just to make it feel a little crazier, Tuesday was the day M was scheduled to fly home, and I would move over to my mom’s house.  I felt like I was dragging the Typhoid Twins all over South Florida!  “So good to see you! Have some geeeerrrrmmms!”

The next few days, Daniel slowly improved while Rebecca went downhill. It was unpleasant, to say the least. The kids weren’t sleeping at all well, between the congestion, fevers, and new places.  I wasn’t sleeping well, because they were awake a lot, and because my back had gone to a very bad place after several nights on an air mattress at my in-laws’.  They woke up too early and were cranky all morning.  The afternoon nap was too short and they’d wake up already in a temper tantrum.  I was exhausted.  It felt like reliving the newborn days, except with the loud insanity of toddlers.  On Thursday, Rebecca threw such a spectacular tantrum that I took her to the doctor to see if she had developed an ear infection.  In fact, no.  Just a tantrum. But the woman I saw asked me to please bring her back in before our flight on Saturday, just so she could make sure her ears were clear to fly. Ha.

There were some bright spots in between all the crying.  Daniel especially had fun in the pool, Rebecca was much more wary.  We went to a great nature center called Gumbo Limbo and met a turtle named Polly who is the same age as the kids.  Rebecca even saw a starfish, pointed, and said “star!”  The weather, blessedly, was perfection.  High 70s to low 80s and sunny, every day.  If it had been 50 and raining, I swear I would have rented a car and started driving north on I-95 until I hit Massachusetts.

Saturday morning, I was clearly in denial.  Rebecca barely slept and woke up extra cranky with a high fever, but I was oh-so-sure her ears would be fine when we went to get them checked.  Yeah, not so much. When they said her ear was bad, I burst into tears.  I cried in the office. I cried in the car on the way to the pharmacy. I cried when I called M to tell him we weren’t coming home.  I cried when the goddamn streets were blocked because of a parade and I had to drive 30 minutes out of my way just to get back to my mom’s place.

I was completely fried.  I know I have a tendency to put on a brave face and maybe not complain too much.  But this trip had completely kicked my ass.  The kids hadn’t woken up happy in a week. There was so much screaming and so little sleeping.  It felt like a nightmare.  And I felt like the trip had been wasted. I was coming down so the grandparents could get their fix, but felt like everyone got short-changed on time and energy.  There was all of this great weather and fun activities, and the kids were having none of it.  I just wanted it to be over.  And did I mention that JetBlue does not do medical fee waivers, so changing our tickets cost me upwards of $600?  Nothing could go right.

Thankfully, by Sunday, Rebecca’s antibiotics had kicked in and she was much happier, and Daniel was completely back to his old self.  They actually woke up from a nap without screaming.  Thank god.  We went for walks, we went back to the pool. I did what I could to redeem the trip, and started to feel a little bit less homicidal.

Monday was unfortunately somewhat cranky again, and the least pleasant weather day of the whole trip, but Rebecca’s ears checked out well enough and we got the green light to come home on Tuesday.  The best we could do with flights was one at 6:30 in the morning, so my mom and I plucked the kids from bed at 4:30AM.  Thankfully, they did really well on the flight.  My mom had to scrap her plans to stay in MA for a few days, and didn’t even leave the airport in Boston.  She got the next flight back to Fort Lauderdale and was home by mid-afternoon.

Anyways, there you have it. The saga that was our extended trip to south Florida.  I’m certainly in no rush to do it again…

Think clear thoughts for Rebecca’s ear check this afternoon, and we should be on our way home before the sun comes up tomorrow morning.  They’re feeling a whole lot better, but still not sleeping well away from home.  We’re all more than ready to get back home to our spaces and routines.

Of course, I have a previously-scheduled twin mom thing I’m hosting tomorrow night, and the rest of the week has our usual slate of activities, so there’s not much rest for the weary.  Thankfully, M is staying home from work tomorrow to help out so I can rest, and then I may do some kind of day of indulgence next weekend if I can get my act together to schedule a massage and a pedicure… we’ll see.

Plus, it will be the usual catch-up and clean-up after vacation, sorting through the 600-odd photos I’ve taken (I had to stop at Target for a new memory card – holy crap, they’re cheap now!), and the assorted things life tends to throw at you.  But I swear, soon I’ll be back…

Keep your fingers crossed for easy travel tomorrow, alright?

I only have a brief moment to type, but the trip from hell continues.  We took Rebecca back to Urgent Care this morning, “just to check” before we flew home.  Yep, ear infection. Can’t go anywhere until the antibiotics kick in lest her ear explode on the flight. Charming.  I won’t lie, I burst into tears when they said it was infected.  I’m so done.

Anyways, off we go again, that’s all the time I’ve got on my mom’s computer.  Hopefully our flight at the crack of dawn on Tuesday will go as planned.

Sigh.

Oh, it’s Thursday? Who knew. Away from home, here in sickie South Florida, I have only a vague sense of time.

Today, though, I was happy that Daniel woke up fever-free, seemingly much better if still coughing. Sadly, Rebecca had already woken up an hour earlier. Crying, nose running, burning up and begging for juice. Motrin and a cool bath helped get things under control, but she’s still not herself. Hopefully she, too, will soon turn the corner and we won’t have any issue flying home on Saturday.

Hope everyone out there in the blogosphere is having a Happy Thursday!

I apologize for the lameness of this post… I can only do so much on the iPhone!

Hoo, boy.  This is turning out to be some kind of vacation, alright.

I wrote late last night on HDYDI that Daniel got a return trip to Urgent Care with daddy and grandma.  Breathing and coughing got worse, he couldn’t sleep (very unusual for him), and he spiked another fever.  Off he went, and came back around midnight with a diagnosis of a really nasty ear infection and a prescription for amoxycillin (10 long days).  The coughing and congestion remains “just” an upper respiratory virus, which sadly means just riding it out and spending some time in the bathroom with hot water running.

So, how’s today going?  Heh.  You guys know what a schedule nut I am.  Daily routines like naps and meals seldom vary more than half an hour from day to day.  My kids are typically up around 7:30, breakfast at 8 or 8:30, activity, snack, lunch around noon, down for a nap between 12:30 and 1:00.  Up around 3 or 3:30, snack, play, dinner at 5:30. Bath starts at 6:45, lights out by 7:15.

Today, Daniel woke up crying and coughing at 6:30 (having not really gone to bed until about 1AM).  Didn’t take long to wake Rebecca up, who also gave us a few nice-sounding coughs and felt a little warm.  By 8:30, Daniel was down for his first nap. We did get them both out for some fresh air. Papi (grandpa) took Daniel in the stroller, I took Rebecca walking over to the pool (“wa-wa? wa-wa?”).  At 11:30, we put them both down.  God only knows how long they will or will not sleep.  Doctor recommended we lay off the milk since it just adds to the gunkiness in their throats, so it’s been juice and water and snacks all day long.   We’re all over the place.

[As a sweet side note, Rebecca is showing some very sweet empathy towards Daniel.  Every time she hears him cry, she calls out for him. "Day-yul? Day-yul?"  She even walked over and gave him a kiss, and brought him some juice.  So sweet.]

Tonight is M’s flight home, and while I’ll miss him, it’s probably just as well.  Neither he nor I feel that great, but I couldn’t get on a plane right now even if we wanted to, what with the sorry state of Daniel’s right ear. So M might as well go home as scheduled and get some rest.  I’ll head over to my mom’s place this afternoon, where at least I’ll have a little more privacy (but no computer!  Hooray for the iPhone…).  The weather is getting warmer, so hopefully the kiddos will feel well enough tomorrow to enjoy being outside and maybe even get into the pool.

And I wonder why I felt ambivalent about this trip… maybe I knew what was coming!