Our crazy week!

Whew! I have never been so glad to see Friday. This has been a week not worth repeating. We started with Hazel running fever on Monday, never more than 102, but a completely miserable little girl. Tuesday I kept her home from school and sent the boys. She was a mess. Cried all. day. long. Charlie came home from school with fever. Great. I'm that mom--the one who sent a sick kid to school.

Wednesday was maybe the hardest day I've ever spent as a mommy. Seriously. It was awful. Charlie still had fever and didn't want to be put down. He was having the day that Hazel had Tuesday. Cried non-stop. Hazel was much happier, and when she opened her mouth to accept a bite of something at one point offered a clue to their misery. She had spots on her tongue. Yep. I called the pediatrician's nurse and described symptoms. She agreed that we have Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. A common but really miserable virus that just has to run its course.

Jonathan, healthy and busy, was not interested in the lack of attention he was getting due to his sick siblings and went into all out destructo mode. He dumped out an entire box of cheerios and a big bag of raisins. We just swept it all out the back door and had some very happy birds in our yard. He also bit the tip off his last paci. He went through a phase right before Christmas where he was biting them at the rate of about one a day. We made him throw them away when they were broken, and told him that when they were gone, that was it. No more pacis. He kept his last one for about 6 weeks. I was impressed. And he chose Wednesday to ruin it and have to learn to go to sleep without it.

He did great, though. He took a couple of last sucks and threw it away with wide eyes. I could tell that he completely understood the gravity of what had just happened. When he went to bed that night and asked for a paci, I calmly reminded him that paci was broken and all gone, and he went to sleep with just a little bit of whining. What a big boy! He also took a nap at school on Thursday without one. Thursday night was a little more rough. I think reality that paci wasn't coming back was hard, but we rubbed his back a little longer than usual and he finally crashed. He's really weaned from it!

Thursday with the babies was better. They're on the mend. They're eating and playing again. Of course, I was pretty overwhelmed with the stuff that didn't get done chore-wise Monday through Wednesday. And still am. But that's why this is the weekend. And I am really very grateful.

We'll post some pictures soon. I got some good ones of the cheerio spill. And I'll probably post a montage of Jono with his paci through the "ages" in memorandum. ;-)