Sick Days

Being sick is no fun.

It's less so when you're the stay-at-home parent. Because life doesn't stop. There are no paid days of rest or recovery, and certainly no replacements arrive to take your place. Life just keeps going.

All the things you typically do in a day still have to be done. Kids up and dressed. Breakfast made and served and cleaned up. Backpacks and lunches ready to go. Errands to be run and groceries to be picked up. Laundry that will not wait and a puppy who still needs his walk. Picking up kids from school. Lunches and afternoon snacks. Dinner and clean up. Bath time and bed time rituals. And work, the part-time job and the freelance job, that both still need to be done.

Being sick is no fun at all.

I've been out of it for over a week now. A nasty head cold that came on late one night and just never went away. No one else in the house is sick, thank goodness. And I'm slowly starting to come out of the fog. Today I feel better. Not great, but better. And after a week of really, really bad, I'll take it.

The sunshine in our part of the world helps, too. Here's hoping they both last for a little while.

Note: I'll be back posting some of the more interesting things that have happened the past week or so that I've been wandering around in a daze. The parts I can remember, anyway.

One Day Later

The Split Lip, originally uploaded by cheryl.

In case you were wondering, here's a picture one day later. Still healing, still getting better. He a tough little guy.

Grammy stopped by to visit and help me take the boys to the park to enjoy the break in the weather. My head cold is still hanging around, but I figured the boys could use the break if I was going to take a sick weekend at home (we canceled our lake plans for the weekend because I wasn't up for the drive or the chasing that would be required in another house).

More photos from the park are here.

Down, But Not Out

Split Lip, originally uploaded by cheryl.

All in all, we've been really lucky when it comes to our boys. They've not had any serious injuries beyond the usual cuts and scrapes and bruises of childhood. We won't talk about the time Sawyer tried to put an M&M up his nose. That doesn't count. Connor had one notable tumble down a couple of stairs in our last house, but it resulted in only a cut and a rather large knot on his forehead. Xander hasn't had anything serious enough to recall.

Generally speaking, there haven't been any serious issues.

Sawyer tried to change all that tonight. The boys were playing together in another room, so we're not sure exactly what happened. All we know is Sawyer made an unusual sound for him and then the next thing we know Connor is coming over to tell us all about the blood.

Lots and lots of blood. Scary amounts of blood. Bright red and everywhere.

It took a while to wipe it up enough to figure out where it was coming from. His whole mouth and face and a large part of his shirt were covered in bright red blood. He wasn't screaming, but he was looking rather pitiful and very much wanting to be held.

Turns out he was playing and either fell (or was pushed) down pretty hard on his face. When he hit, his top teeth dug into his lower lip. There were three serious gashes in it, and it was bleeding a lot.

We contemplated stitches, because one of the cuts was pretty deep. But we weighed that against the long wait (after hours, so a trip to the ER would be in order), having to physically restrain him while someone worked on him, and then having to fight him to leave them alone once they were actually in.

Luckily for us, Grammy is a practicing ER nurse and was in the area. She stopped by to take a look, and told us he would probably only get one maybe two in the center cut. And that decided it. One stitch was not enough to put any of us through that ordeal, especially Sawyer.

Right now, it's scabbed over and starting to heal. The trick, of course, will be the same as if we had opted for that single stitch. Now we have to get him to leave the scabs alone long enough to truly heal.

So the bad news is he's got a pretty seriously split lip. The good news is that he's healing and doesn't seem terribly affected by it. Only time will tell whether he will be able to leave it alone to finish healing, or whether he's going to have a scar to show for the trouble.

The Bottomless Pit

Also known as my five-year old son.

Last night for dinner we had a rare treat, something we haven't had in quite a while. We grilled ribeye steak outside. And no, it's not warming up any in our part of the world, we just wanted to.

So my five-year old is incredibly excited by this turn of events. He LOVES steak. He danced around the whole time saying "Yummy steak!" over and over again. He then proceeded to eat an entire ribeye, you know, an adult-size portion. He even ate the less choice parts, the ones we often save as scraps for our puppy. He also ate mashed potatoes and green peas and roll. And then he wanted seconds, on everything. Which he also proceeded to eat, all except a few peas, which are his least favorite of the meal.

Today for lunch, he was equally ravenous. He had two whole pieces of ham, about 25 or 30 Stax potato chips, and an entire can of mandarin oranges. And he was still hungry. He had some more chips and a big cup of milk.

And then an hour later, when it was time for his brothers to have their lunch after school, he was hungry again. As I start putting out their plates, he comes walking up and says,

"I love applesauce. I like grapes. And yogurt. And graham crackers."

Yes, you like just about everything. We know.

"Mommy, I'm hungry!"

And that's why our grocery bill is out of control. Bottomless pit, also known as the five-year old.

Busy Times

The last few days have been busy ones.

On Friday Connor's class had a field trip to a place called Monkey Joe's, where there are tons of inflatables for kids to enjoy. We spent several hours there, waiting to pick up brothers from school. A few photos are here, though the lighting conditions are less than ideal. He was ready for a nap before we even made it home after picking up brothers.

The end of last week also included another freelance marketing project for me, so I've started working on that in my spare time.

This was also my weekend to work at my part-time job, so I put in eight hours on Saturday and six hours on Sunday. That took up much of my weekend. The boys spent time with Daddy and also some time with Pappy just hanging out around the house.

Today school resumed for all three boys. I also had an in-depth interview with two school psychologists who are part of the team that will evaluate Xander for a possible autism diagnosis. That took a little over two hours.

Did I mention busy?