Topsy Turvey Week

It has been one of those weeks.  My son has had flu symptoms since Friday night, and only just last night started to seem better.  So that’s three full days and nights of a miserable boy and panicking mom (including a frantic trip to the ER when I thought his fever was near 105) and many calls to nurses and on-call doctors.

                                          This little Dr. gave us a very unfavorable diagnosis.

At the height of his fevers, Luke did not want to drink anything or take his medicine- it was a huge battle which we were quickly losing.  With each dose that we gave him it seemed that more and more was getting on his shirt, the sheets, or ourselves.  In the end he was actually spitting it back out.  Then, as tribute to the confusing psyche of the toddler, this morning when Luke didn’t actually seem to have a fever he pointed to the medicine on our dresser- I thought he could use some just in case and he took that little cup and guzzled that Tylenol as if it were the best thing he’d ever tasted.

Meanwhile my daughter, who has recently started coughing as well (but no fever yet so our fingers are crossed), was wishing to be sick so she could have some of the Pedialyte “juice” that her brother got.  Today I finally gave her some and, no surprise, she said she doesn’t like it.

Somewhere in the midst of our flu frenzy, I decided it may be a good idea to bleach our plastic shower curtain liner.  I half read the directions on the bleach for how much to put in a load of laundry, spent several minutes freeing the liner from the stupid curtain hooks, and threw the dirty liner in to wash.  Then I proceeded to take the kids to the basement and let them play while I vacuumed the basement steps.  (I’m not sure, but it may be only the first or second time I’ve ever attempted to clean those steps.  It is much easier now with our lightweight vac.)

After a frustrating battle with Luke trying to “help” vacuum and later dumping juice on the carpet, I decided it was time for the kids to go upstairs.

I sent them to Jeff and went to get the curtain liner out of the wash only to find that my liner was sitting in a shredded wet pile in my washer.  Has this happened to anyone else on the face of the earth? Ever?  I’m doubtful.  I figured I either put too much bleach in and the liner became to brittle (?) or the spin cycle was too harsh- or a combination of both.  On the plus side, it WAS quite clean…when I dumped it into a trash bag.

And to top this week off, despite my best efforts, we managed to come home from the library with a Barney video which BOTH of my kids are in love with.  We had made it so long without Barney, I thought we were in the clear!  When Luke couldn’t sleep one night this week I literally slept on the couch with him while that ridiculous dino video looped over and over.  They are actually both watching it as I type to help them rest.  To make matters worse, I think I’m softening somewhat on my anti-princess campaign for Charlotte- a few days ago I actually considered buying her a Disney princess dress on sale at Aldi, and even picked out an Olivia princess story for her from the library.  Where have all my principles gone?

Stupid flu.

But Jeff made a good observation last night, as he was sitting on our bed with a suddenly very energetic and bouncy Luke.  He was so glad to see our little boy feeling better that it was an absolute joy to just play with him and see him laugh; normally, however, we would both be pretty aggravated if he were jumping around at 10pm.  I hate for our kids to be sick, or for anything bad to ever happen, but sometimes in the trying times we get a little perspective on what we care about most- and what matters very little.