I love Christmas Break. I live for the two weeks of no schedules, eating loads of good food, and just having fun with my children. This year we were ultra excited because Jeremy’s folks were coming from Kansas City for 5 days! My kids get to see their Grandparents maybe twice a year, so they were SUPER excited to see Grandma and Grandpa!
Thursday came and Amelia was up and ready before I was. She was ready for her pajama party and “winter” party at school. Seth, on the other hand, was still in bed. When I went to investigate he told me his stomach hurt. Upon further inspection, I found he had a fever. DANGIT. He was going to miss his holiday party. This is when you know a child isn’t faking it, when they are sick on the day of a party. Libby’s preschool was cancelled that day also because the Mom who was going to be hosting had a sick kiddo. Jeremy and I made plans for him to come home and stay with sickie sickerton so I could go help with Amelia’s party. We were hopeful it was a 24 hour bug and Seth would be right as rain by the next day when Grandma and Grandpa came.
Friday came and Seth was feeling a bit better. He was still fevering off and on, but with ibuprofen in him, he felt great. Grandma and Grandpa came, we went out to dinner, stayed up late and had fun.
Saturday morning dawned bright and early. Seth was fever free, so we decided to make the most of the day. We went to a local arcade stop, Main Event, played games, had lunch, bowled and generally had a fabulous time. That night we watched Christmas movies and ate Chinese takeout. I was feeling a little off, but I contributed it to the baby not loving all the eating out.
Elliott wasn’t sleeping well, so he was in bed with us and wanted to be attached all night. When I’m not pregnant I can’t handle that. Add to that my tender breasts and I wanted to cry. Then around 5 am I started to feel sick. I stayed in bed as long as I could willing it to stop, but it didn’t. I had to work my way out between Libby and Elliott and just barely made it to the bathroom. That is how I spent the rest of the day. I have very little memories of December 23 – I slept and was sick all day. By that evening though, I was feeling better and was able to join the family for watching Little Women, and later was able to get all the Christmas presents wrapped before collapsing in bed. It was a pretty miserable day with both Seth and I being sick. I hoped and prayed it was the end.
In the wee small hours of the morning, I awoke to a hot, fevering Elliott throwing up in my bed. Jeremy and I were able to get it cleaned up and back in bed relatively quickly. However, I spent the night sleeping with a baby on one arm and a cup to catch his vomit in the other. It was a long night and I definitely planned on having a nice Christmas Eve nap the next day.
In the morning we found Elliott a pretty sick boy. He had a fever, was listless and was still throwing up every so often. By now I wanted to cry. I had no idea though how much worse it was going to get. Jeremy and I had decided to take the kids and his folks to lunch and to see Wreck it Ralph. Since Elliott was sick, Jeremy, his folks and the kids were going to go have fun while I stayed home with the babe and got caught up on House Hunters.
Jeremy and his Dad ran to the store to get a few supplies and were not gone for long when the freakiest freak accident occurred. Libby was playing and jumped on Amelia’s pillow pet. She screamed and I looked to see what was wrong. My mother-in-law picked up a toothpick off the floor and said, “I think she jumped on this”. Sure enough, in one of the many times my children got out toothpicks and scattered them, one got lodged in the pillow pet. It was just at the right angle and broke off in her foot.
Left: Toothpick in the foot; Right: You can see how much was broken off in her foot
I picked her up, called Jeremy (with screaming Elliott and Libby on my lap) and calmly told him he needed to come home immediately, Libby had a toothpick stuck in her foot.
To be continued….
[...] Comedy of Errors: Christmas Break Style part 1 [...]