Well, apparently Zack was not the only one in the family to be bitten by the flu bug. Maddie and Andrew got sick the Sunday evening of their primary program. Then, Ben and I got it in the middle of the night that night. We were all so sick. It was awful. We called in reinforcements to help with the kids. Ben's mom came and whisked the older three off to her house in Arlington. Ben and I were so sick and weak that even having Mylie with us was challenging.
Unfortunately, our germs liked to travel. First, Ben's mom got sick, then his brother, then his cousin that lives with them, and so on until it had passed through their entire family. Ben's dad is the bishop and several families in their ward had planned to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Burton's home, but instead Ben's mom took all the food to the church and served them there, even though she was still feeling wiped out. (As far as we know, no one that attended that dinner got sick.)
We had Thanksgiving at Brooke and Justin's house. The kids carried on the tradition of making apple turkeys, by spearing marshmallows, raisins, and gumdrops onto toothpicks to represent feathers, and sticking the feathers into the apple to make a turkey. Earlier I had received a frantic call from Brooke telling me to hurry and pre-heat my oven, because the turkey was on the way over. Shortly after she had put the turkey in her oven, the inside of her oven burst into flames. Who knows what happened, but the turkey only visited our oven for a half hour before their oven issue was resolved and it went home.
Justin got sick with the flu that night, then my Dad the next day, and Josh the day after that. It was an awful, AWFUL flu. But, fortunately, we're all over it and with a renewed appreciation for toilets and for our health.
Ben and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary on Thanksgiving. We went to dinner at Bonefish grill on the Tuesday before our anniversary to mark the occasion. It was nice to have an hour or so of grown up time. It is rare.
Potty training with Andrew is seeming to be an endless process. I'm so sick of hearing about kids who trained in one day. I know it is said that we are not tested beyond what we can bear, but I think this is coming pretty dang close.
After the five billionth time of me asking him to use the toilet, and Andrew telling me he did not need to, he of course pooped in his underwear. We have reached the point that I just chuck the underwear now. If it were only a once or twice in a life time occurance of needing to clean it out then maybe I wouldn't, but I've given up. The gross out factor is more than necessary. Apparently there is no bribe big or strong enough to be worth the inconvenience of Andrew leaving his computer game and high-tailing it to the toilet.
He has a new trick where he shuts the door for "privacy" and waits for a while and flushes. He thinks he's got me fooled with this Wait and Flush maneuver, but I'm on to him. His charade would be more believable if he came out needing help pulling his pants back up, since he has a hard time with that. Instead, he just shuts the door, stands by the toilet for a minute, flushes the toilet, washes his hands, then opens the door and asks for a lollipop.
Today I thought we might make it all the way to bedtime with no accident. It is very hit or miss with him. He does poop in the toilet quite often, but he forgets just as often. A little before dinner tonight he called me into the bathroom to tell me, "The poop in my tummy decided to go downstairs to my underwear. Can you change me?" I guess it was bound to happen some time, because a few days ago he told me he didn't need to use the toilet due to the fact his poop was "still in the middle of a tea party" in his tummy.
On the way home from preschool today he told me that we should "find a million girls to have a tea party." Then he thought about what he said and mused, "That will be a lot a lot of drinks."
We got our Christmas tree on Saturday and decorated it Sunday night. It is so fun to have the tree up. However, Andrew and Zack cannot keep themselves away from it. There favorite thing to do is to pull the plug out from the wall to turn off the lights. It drives me crazy.
Andrew learned earlier today that he could make the lights go off by unscrewing them, so he unscrewed every bulb he could reach. While I was busy twisting the bulbs back on, Andrew was standing on the other side of the tree. Then I hear him say to himself, "Ooooo, my hands are SO pretty." I would have thought that was an odd comment, but it seemed normal coming from Andrew. All of a sudden I see one of his hands shoot around from behind the tree and he had hung an ornament on each of his fingers. We've had to have lots of talks about STAYING AWAY from the tree. "Look but don't touch" is a message lost on a three year old.
When Ben asked Andrew a few days ago how his day was, he told Ben, "Mom is mean. Mean like a mean, mean dinosaur." I think that was in reference to a scolding after he didn't make it to the toilet. Still, it made me sad to be a mean, mean dinosaur. It reminded me of the time a few years ago when Maddie told me to stop acting weird. When I asked her what she meant, she said she wanted me to stop smiling, because usually I don't smile and it was making her feel weird. Am I the only one raising strange children?
As she was getting into her pajamas the other day Maddie explained to me the reason why Santa doesn't bring presents to grown ups: "Grown ups do not know how to have fun...especially NOT on Saturdays." Apparently we need to cut back on the amount of errand running and chores we do on Saturdays, because I would sure love some stuff from Santa...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment