Tea Parties and Train Sets

While my husband (and I'm sure many others) thought I was crazy for wanting our children so close together, I just couldn't be persuaded to have it any other way. I wanted to be a young mother with kids who were close enough to be buddies. And although there are certainly very hard days (and more so nights!) when I feel like there is nobody in this house who is big enough to do anything for themselves, much less help me out with all of the work, for the most part it has been truly wonderful. One very hard thing for me about this arrangement; however, has been to see my kids, who really are so close to each other, be separated when they each go off to their own individual activities. I first encountered this last year in Pennsylvania when Maddi was in a little preschool co-op. Before, when she had been in a preschool co-op, Spencer had been too little to miss her. This time around; however, he felt Maddi's absence on preschool day most keenly. He would want Maddi to stay home, or want to be dropped off at preschool with her. And it simply broke my heart to see him so sad when we would leave her there. In fact, a few weeks into the preschool year, I made a promise to myself and to Spencer (Emma was still too little to notice) to try and remedy the situation. I promised that while Maddi was away at preschool, that would be his time to have mommy's undivided attention. While it was hard not to run errands or do housework during this time, the immediate change in Spencer's persona when we dropped Maddi off for preschool made it all worth while. Although I know he still missed Maddi as his closest playmate, he humored me by getting excited for our weekly "dates" to play soccor at the park, or do the animal flash cards, or sneak up to Daddy's work for free milk shakes. (Just gotta love the hospital meal cards!) It was a decision I have never regretted. And a decision that carried over when we moved to Minnesota. This time, however, the task became an even bigger sacrifice since both Maddi and Spencer had activities and Emma was big enough to start feeling left out. At first I wondered how I would manage to give up so much time when I needed to be cleaning or grocery shopping or something else. It didn't take long, though, to realize that I was not really giving up my time at all. On the contrary, I was giving in to being the young mother I had always dreamed of being, with kids so close together they are each others best friends, and my best friends too. It has been wonderful. And with preschool and play group coming to a close, and our chapter of separation simultaneously coming to a close, (our homeschooling year starts on June 1st) I figured I ought to take a moment and document some of the kid's favorite mommy days.

First, a fairly typical Tuesday morning having girl time with my beautiful little ladies. We're having a tea party, in case you can't tell, and those are actually two of my dresses from when I was a little girl.



And did I mention that we had a very special visit from the most handsome little fairy God-mother....er...father that I have ever met! I'm sure he'll thank me for taking this picture some day!



And second, a typical Friday morning playing cars and trains. This is always what Spencer wants to do, and suprisingly, Mason and Emma go right along with it week after week.

Amoxicillin, Azithromycin, Acetaminophen and Anything Else We Can Find!

I don't know if this rings true for others, but it seems like when our family is healthy, we're healthy. And when we're sick, we're really sick, and for a really long time. For the most part we have been very lucky because our family has been very healthy; but, twice since we welcomed children into our home five and a half years ago, we have come down with some really nasty bugs--what I loving refer to as "The Plague." The first time occurred our last year in St. Louis when I was 8 months pregnant with Emma. We had just returned from our three week residency interviewing tour, (and just declined the flu shot at the Pediatrician's office) when Nick brought the flu home from work. (He had had the flu shot that year--mind you.) The whole family was taken with full blown flu symptoms for over a week. It was awful, and to make matters worse, Nick insisted on going to one last interview in Kansas City and left me and the kids home by ourselves. I felt like Brigham or Heber's wife bidding my sickly husband farewell from my own sick bed. That was, of course, one of the worst interview trips on record. He threw up all the way through the dinner the night before, and then the next morning on the way to the interview he got into two- not one, but two- car accidents, totaling my car. (Needless to say, we did not rank Kansas City very high on our rank list.) After returning from the trip, Nick and I managed to return to full health; however, Madison and Spencer both got secondary infections followed by another round of sickness that occurred the very week that I was in the hospital having Emma. It was so awful! There was nothing worse that having my babies home sick and not being able to be with them! Luckily, though, Emma managed to stay healthy in spite of coming home to the crazy germ fest! This illness, however, led to another round of secondary infections in Maddi, and then serial ear infections that eventually landed her in the operating room to have tubes put in her ears. It was a rough few months--our sick year, as I referred to it in my personal journal.
While that was over two years ago, the second time our family has been really sick happened more recently. And of course, it all started with something Nick brought home from work. One day he came home with a little cough and some mild laryngitis. Then each one of the kids fell victim to a sore throat and fits of coughing. Finally I succumbed to all of the ailments. I was the last to become sick, and consequently, got the sickest of everyone in the family. After two weeks of real struggling, I finally got to feeling better--but not, however, before I passed the sickness back around. Round two brought even more misery, and when it came back to me again, I thought I would die for sure. It all started at the grocery store when I suddenly was so overcome that I had to stop shopping and lay on the floor for a half an hour while the kids ran up and down the goldfish isle. Then the next thing I knew I was driving myself to the ER in the middle of the night because my throat was so swollen I could hardly breath. (Don't worry, I had my window rolled down so the cold night air would keep me from passing out!) While I am not generally a herald of modern medicine, let me just say that I could have shouted Hallelujah when the steroids they gave me in the ER finally kicked in and I was able to get out of bed. This time my recovery was much quicker than before, but much to my horror, only a day after I started really feeling better, little Emma came down with another fever. I thought I was quite possibly going to go over the edge. Luckily, it was not the horribly mutated and unresponsive version of strep throat/some other crazy bacterial infection that I had come down with. Instead, it was just the minor problem of having her ear drum burst! My poor little Emma! She was such a trooper though--and I think we have all finally returned to full health. (knock on wood!)

Just for memories sake, I took a picture of all of the drugs that sat on our counter last month--first mine, and then little Emmie's. For awhile I felt like an at home pharmacy!





Hopefully this counts as our "sick year" and buys us some health and wellness for a while.