cleaning 11 | This is my norm

A reality of what happens when Mom gets sick.

I feel like I have been sick this entire year. I know this is a slight exaggeration because the whole month of January we were on our Daniel Fast. Two days from the end is when our entire family got the stomach flu. THAT was fun. Then February started and I spent the first two weeks regaining my appetite from being sick for 10 days. Got over that, had a week of church every night which was amazing but left us exhausted, Sunday night Ella threw up all night. I woke up Monday exhausted and by Monday night I had scratchy throat. I first figured that it was just from singing so much lately. But also knew with the lack of sleep issue this could be symptom #1 that my body was about to crater. Through the evening I could feel the heaviness slowly welling up in my head and eyes as the mucus must have started multiplying by a thousand pounds per minute.

:::results of last night’s comfort food dinner grocery store run,

non-perishables still waiting to be put away:::

I woke up Tuesday and there it was.

Full on sickness staring me in the face. One side of my sinuses were totally clogged from laying there for hours. Niiiiice. So it begins.

I usually live in denial the first day. Thinking to myself, I can beat this. Just get some vitamin C. Don’t give in. Continue on as usual. Don’t look the sickness in the eyes.

By nightfall, it has overtaken me. I am dragging. This is when I start my meds. Hoping to wake up in the morning a new person. Totally recovered.

WRONG.

Instead I feel worse. Throat is glue. Now both sides of my sinuses

And then……….the kicker.

My lungs have joined the party. Oh they hurt. I have decided to invent a suction that I can stick down my throat on mornings like these and suck out all the junk to relieve my aching lungs. Oh the agony.

:::the BEST medicine a girl can get!:::

I want to be in bed for days. I want to bury myself under my heavy comforter and melt into my fluffy pillow that may or may not have a pillow case on it. I don’t even know. I’m living in a fog. My days are run-on sentences as my mom would say. I want to only resurface to gulp down the cure-all for all sickness, wonton soup.

And just as a sidenote…..why is it that every time I get sick, is also the time when I suddenly become completely bothered that nothing is getting done and everything in the house is falling behind? Yet I have no energy to do anything about it. So here I am, once again, sick.

The chores that are piling up, the products of my errands laying scattered around the house. The loads of laundry that need to be done and the ones that are done that need to be put away. The bathroom floors…..oh the bathroom floors. Don’t even get me started on the floors.

:::two clean baskets of laundry:::

(there are a few more of these laying around here somewhere)

:::dinner table with last night’s dessert bowls still in place

as well as the crumbs and school Valentines party leftovers:::

:::half cleaned bathroom:::

toilet, tub and left counters cleaned during Ella’s throwup marathon

and left unfinished once she finally fell asleep at 2am and I followed immediately behind

:::my poor children wearing the same clothes from yesterday:::

i.e. Chocolate stain from aforementioned dessert last night

After dropping Hayden off at school, I went to pick up a book that was on hold for me at the library. I didn’t WANT to go get the book today, nor felt like doing anything except breathe and sleep, but I have been on the waiting list for this book for 2 months, 54 people deep in the waiting list and this is the last day they will hold it for me.

I decided I would swing in, park under the carport at the door. Lock the car, grab my book on the shelves by the door, use the auto check out and leaving immediately. I didn’t even plan on getting the twins out of the car. I was sure that I could convince the twins that Max and Ruby movie day would be sooooo much fun and we’d come back to the library for a longer visit another day. Or my Mom suggested I tell them it was a “boat day”. My brother and I used to do that on rainy days. I figured with all the sick days and freezing cold can’t-play-outside-today days lately they would declare mutiny and sink the “boat”.

Instead, at the first sighting of the beloved library, they begged for me to let the lady read them books at the library. Toddler Storytime. Immediately my mind starts thinking of ways to let them down gently with promises of going as soon as I felt better. But we drove in right at 10:40 and it had just started at 10:30. So in we go. Hand in hand.

We joined in for storytime and were then informed that the YMCAwould be there for childrens excercise day immediately following storytime.

Well, we were already there so why not. The twins had so much fun, running relay races and doing their “work out”. They told me at the end they were “SO tired” and “really needed a drink!”

When we got back in the car and buckled up, Preslyn said “Mom, that was SO much fun.” I’m so glad I sucked it up and let them participate. Who wants to play “boat” when you get the one chance ever to break the holy rule of silence at the library. And on top of that you get to squeal and run and excersise at the same time! Every three-year-olds dream come true!

So now maybe I won’t feel so bad about the Max and Ruby marathon to follow.

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Last night around 6pm is when it started. The first of 10-12 episodes of hurling. My poor Hayden. It hit her like a ton of bricks and wouldn’t let up until the wee hours of the morning. I slept on the couch so I could hear her when she needed me.

Let me tell ya, bolting awake to the sound of your child calling for you or already throwing up is not the number one way I prefer to be awoken…and not once but multiple times. My heart hurt for her as I watched her whole body turn red as the blood rushed through her pale skin. I held her hair and rubbed her and felt horrible. Every time she finished she would raise her head up and tears were just rolling down her bright red cheeks. My heart ached to take the pain from her.

So this morning, came and went and we slept in. The rain falling softly on our tin roof was just what the doctor ordered. I heard the twins wake up and start their gymnastics match in their room that quickly had to come to a halt. Those monkeys! They were starting to rearrange the furniture and had literally ever single toy they owned out and scattered all over the room.

I dragged myself off the couch and up to find out what awaited me. A limp little Hayden, still in her bed. Poor girl. That is a sign right there, because she is normally the first to wake up every day, rain or shine, school day or not.

So the toast was made, the juice started, Leapster to the rescue, along with magnet dolls and a couple of books. Sick day had begun. Once I had her settled for a bit, on to the disaster that awaited. At least it had bought me a few extra winks of much needed sleep!

I decided instead of just cleaning up, it would be a reorganizing and purging day. So we spent the greater part of the day sorting toys in to piles, finding missing pieces, rearranging, putting toys in the attic that were no longer age appropriate and boxing up others that were going to be given away.

The girls were on board with the concept. Most of the time. Ella kept asking me why we were giving some toys away. I told her they had too many and couldn’t even play with all of them. Some little girls would love to have some of their toys that they no longer played with. So she replied in a worried voice, “But how do you know we are giving us toys away???” It totally caught me by surprise and made me laugh and reply, ” Well, because I’m the one giving them away.”

I have also been wanting to shorten their curtains for months now. Our windows in this house are a strange size and nearly impossible to find curtains that fit. I didn’t want to buy new ones, since they had only been used for the year we were at our past home. Instead they have just been hanging, not looking “right” but just serving their purpose to darken the room. So today seemed like a good day to get that type of project done, since it had been a declared sick day and I didn’t have any pressing work to get done. (I had done all that in between Hayden’s episodes last night, before I finally crashed around 2am, thinking the worst was behind us.)

So, my rainy day/sick day project is now complete! The room is reorganized, lighter on the toy-front, cleaned and vacuumed.

Before

After

I put together my own recipe for spaghetti sauce and it was delish (recipe to come later), served it with a fabulous salad, loaded with veggies, homemade dressing (also to come later)and wheat pasta. Kids are bathed and tucked in their beds and now the sick day is officially over.
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This is my norm

Category Archives: cleaning 11

being sick is ridonkulous

rain on a green tin roof