5:00, 3:00 and 4:00

Those would be the times (in the PM) that I've finally managed to get up and dressed these past three days. Fun times are happening over at the Yoders.

Mark and Madelyn caught a cold last week, and I started to come down with it on Friday night. It was never that severe with the regular cold symptoms, but I was EXHAUSTED. (Come to think of it, I was exhausted to begin with--this whole past month has been brutal.) Anyway, I literally slept most of the day Saturday. I did finally manage to shower and get dressed, but that was the extent of things.

Saturday night, Luke came down with a fever, and when he's not feeling well he likes to sleep in my bed while I hold him all night, so neither Mark nor I get much sleep. Time to get a king sized bed, perhaps? We all still felt wiped out Sunday, so we stayed home from church and rested. The kids seemed to be fine--Luke bounced back from his fever and was up to his usual antics:

After a rousing round of Let's Play in the Toilet, he took advantage of the trash canister being empty and stuffed it full with his blocks.

 

And off come the jammies! That boy does not like to stay dressed. Who cares what the weather is like?

I just had to post this because I realized that there's a really creepy screen shot of Emperor Palpatine in the background. We were watching Return of the Jedi, and Madelyn was showing off her new disco sweater.

 We went to bed and things seemed fine--I had trouble falling asleep as usual so I was still semi-awake when Madelyn came in and told me that her tummy hurt at 1:00 am. She said she didn't feel like throwing up or using the potty, so we thought she might be hungry and I got up to make her a snack. After about half an hour, she gave up trying to eat and was heading back to bed when she started retching and I got her to the bathroom sink just in time to throw up. 

That woke Luke up, who climbed into bed with Mark, and I thought we'd be able to calm down and go back to bed when I made the mistake of reheating Madelyn's rice bag in the microwave. Luke heard me using the microwave WITHOUT HIM from clear across the house and came unglued. He staggered into the kitchen and we had to try and appease his Unreasonable Toddler Demands. I laid down with him and eventually got him back to sleep and back in his own bed.

But then......Madelyn threw up again and her whole torso had broken out in hives. She was scratching her back so hard it was drawing blood. Of course I couldn't find our cortizone cream anywhere, and we were out of Benadryl and children's Claritin....eventually I found some teeny sample sizes of itch cream that I put all over her body, and had her lie down on the couch with cool washcloths on her back. Mark said it was probably an allergic reaction to peanuts, which she's never had a problem with but had just eaten more than usual earlier that day. I have food allergies so I know all about those awful hives.

Then the diarrhea came. This continued all night, about every half hour. She'd either have to toss her cookies again, or pass some diarrhea, or both at the same time. Finally at 7:00 am it appeared to be all over and she felt good again.

 She stayed home today and she and Luke bounced around as if nothing had ever happened. 

I, for one, could use one of those tranquilizer darts they use to take down wild game.

And in another, totally unrelated note, Mark and I just got done watching this:

Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. It's a BBC miniseries that is on Netflix that was just so full of English-ness, dreary London and dastardly deeds that it could only be Dickens. As per usual, upwards of a dozen people either become deathly ill and/or die, and/or meet a grisly end somehow and it just made me so grateful that people don't drop dead from colds and fevers and peanut allergies as much as they used to back then. The acting is superb--I especially loved Denis Lawson (Wedge Antilles from Star Wars!! An old favorite of mine!) and Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock. Mr. Tulkinghorn will make your blood boil. Oh and there's romance, too. Check it out for some good entertainment!