Sick Day

Apologies to all for my last post being such a bummer. I think my (self-diagnosed) Seasonal Affective Disorder was in full swing on Tuesday night. I am not miserable! My wonderful family brightens each of my days, and though I would rather not be cleaning up vomit or wiping noses, I will gladly do both of those things (and more) for my kids. Most of my frustrations are rooted in the feeling that there is 36 hours worth of work to do in any given 24 hour day, and that no matter how hard I work or how much I do, there is so much more I am leaving behind. I've heard that this is just a feature of parenting, though, and that I'll have to learn how to deal with it sooner or later.

That said, writing about how I was feeling actually helped me resolve a lot of things...I'm not sure it had such a restorative effect on my handful of readers, though. (Not 10 minutes after I finished writing it, I walked into the living room and was greeted with "That post is so sad!") I'm keen to bump my previous post off the title page so nobody feels like they have to call 911 on me. So here you go: a new post, and one more about the kids than about me.

Natalia was cooped up at home on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I bit the bullet today and took a sick day to be at home with Andres. "Biting the bullet" may be a bit of hyperbole (I can't use that phrase without recalling a trip to Harper's Ferry, VA about 25 years ago when I learned where it came from)--we actually had a very pleasant day, the highlight of which may have been the 50 degree weather. This allowed me to shut off the heat, open all the windows in the house, and let a cleansing breeze remove all viruses from our home. (That was the intention, anyway.)

The three-year old patient seems to have regained control of his stomach, but he had a fever yesterday and his appetite has been almost non-existent, so sending him back to daycare seemed unwise. I was encouraged when he ate a piece of bread and a drank a glass of milk first thing this morning, but this seemed to diminish his appetite for the rest of the day, as he allowed a full plate of waffles to remain untouched through breakfast (a rarity) and seemed indifferent towards fruit (again, rare).

For a sick kid who hadn't eaten in a few days, though, his mood was fantastic. This was nice to see. After his non-breakfast he decided that he wanted to decorate his sister's ride-on car with some ribbons:



He followed that up by identifying some letters on the fridge:



Eventually I gave up on breakfast. He clearly wasn't going to eat, and I was worrying too much about it...it was a no-win situation. We vacated the kitchen, threw on our sneakers, and headed outside for some driveway basketball. (I also figured that physical activity would boost his appetite.)



Now the thing about basketball is that the backboard is an integral part of the game. Unfortunately, the backboard on our Little Tykes hoop blew off during one of the windstorms in December and then promptly got snowed under. And while I did have the foresight to bring the hoop itself inside for the winter, no such foresight existed with regards to the backboard. After all, how much snow could POSSIBLY fall in a winter? If I ever needed to dig around to find it, I'd be fine.

Feeling guilty about my son's inability to have a good game of basketball on the nicest day of the year so far, I started to dig underneath the 4 feet of snow in the front yard...thinking that I new exactly where the backboard was. Let's just say it was a failed attempt.

The Great Excavation.

It's not often that I say an 8-foot long snow tunnel is a disappointment, but when you are digging the tunnel to find something and then do not find it, it certainly is. So here's my take-away from today: don't count on nature not burying something for you when you can spend 3 minutes moving it yourself. Lesson learned.

We headed back inside, and my cunning plan to use physical activity to boost Andres' appetite fell flat. He still wasn't hungry beyond taking a few bites of yogurt and drinking some more milk. Soon he went down for a nap. He must have been exhausted, because he woke up around 5, well after Natalia and Celia had returned home.

Dinner time was more of the same. Picking at food here and there, not exhibiting any real interest...except in harnessing the telecommunications powers of a banana, of course:



Celia picked up on this idea, though her execution was a little different...hers looks more like it could be a mobile phone:



Though these phones are messy, I do like their pricing plan. And eating them has health benefits, which is more than I can say for my Droid. Ah well. Slowly getting back to normal around here.