Quarantined

March 31, 2007 on 9:35 pm | In Bett's, Funny Kid Stories | No Comments

Our very sweet children have been sick for going on two weeks. Both of them. While this may be normal for many people, it isn’t for us, and to make matters worse, they have both had diseases that no one would wish upon another family. Eli started it the Tuesday before last (March 20) by throwing up in the middle of the night. He started off by throwing up on our KING-SIZED comforter, and soaked through the douvet, comforter, and top sheet, only we did not find out about the top sheet until later. The following morning when I went to get them up, I found he had also emptied the rest of his gut (and I had foolishly thought it had been emptied!) onto his crib, bumper pads, blankets, stuffed toys, pajamas, and hair. He also had diarrhea. He never cried when he threw up, which was both a postive and negative. It was positive in that I got to sleep without interruption so much, and negative because the mess was a little horrific. At least it was contained in the crib.

I stripped all layers of the crib: sheets, mattress pad, second matress pad, blankets, bumper pads, and stuffed animals. I sprayed disinfectant over the mattress, the crib bars, the bedroom door… basically any place I could think of that Eli may have contaminated.

For breakfast that morning, Eli ate like he had not eaten in days, which I suppose is understandable given that nothing had remained in his digestive system. However, an hour or so later, Hannah came running down the hall yelling, “Oops! Oops! Mommy help me!” Fearing the worst (more of the same from a new child), I ran over, only to find that Eli had… regurgitated all of his oatmeal. On the carpet. Being the brilliant but sensory daughter she is, Hannah Kairos had stuck her ENTIRE hand in the mass. I disinfected her hand for 67 seconds, just to be safe. I guess Eli was not done with the flu. By the time Eli’s bedtime rolled around, he was down to a liquid-only diet, administed carefully in 1-ounce-or-less doses until he stopped throwing up. He did. Hannah began four hours later, deep into the wee small hours.

Three stomach-emptyings, four pairs of pajamas, and two entire sheet-blanket-fringes sets later, we got to sleep for three solid hours. Did I mention that my washing machine broke somewhere about this time? Thankfully, we could use our landlords’, but hauling thirteen loads of “chunky” (not to mention putrid) laundry up and down the stairs in one 24-hour period was not the most enjoyable experience I have had in the recent past. That and we discovered a lot of the chunks should be rinsed or shaken out PRIOR to entering the washer because they do not fit down the drain.

The following day they seemed mostly better, but we still had to be quarantined because we were likely still contagious. Then Eli threw up again late at night. We discovered that Hannah and Eli were 24 hours apart from each other in the play-out of the flu. We also discovered that it was not a mere “24-hour bug,” or a 36-hour one, or 72-hour… no, this one lasted FIVE STINKING DAYS. No MOMS group for me. No church. No kids play-group. No grocery shopping. No errand-running. No trips to the park. NOTHING. On Sunday after we realized that the last child had thrown up for the last time over 24 hours ago! we breathed a sigh of relief and thought we were in the clear. I could escape these four walls and see people again.

Sunday night/Monday morning Eli woke up about eight times because he could not breathe. The same activities were repeated the following night, and the night after that, and the night after that… We wondered if Eli had pneumonia. He could not eat anything, he had had a fever for over a week, his cough rotated between very raspy and deep and tight and dry and itchy. In desparation I brought him (and Hannah) to the doctor. They had a “mere virus.”

No. A “mere virus” does not awaken parents SEVENTEEN TIMES throughout the night because the child cannot breathe! That is a “nasty virus.” There is nothing “mere” about it; unless you want to be that sleep deprived. Did I also mention that Eli followed his wakeful nights with a sleep-strike by day so that any hopes of recouping sleep by taking naps were dashed? He also screamed his entire “quiet time,” which meant that Hannah who shares a room with him also did not sleep. Hannah is not pleasant when she does not sleep, though the mommy is far, far worse. By Tuesday I was homicidal. I had to go on a very long drive to keep my fingers away from Eli’s throat or my hands from throwing him against the wall. I thought about leaving him at the end of a driveway at a farm in the middle of nowhere, but envisioning him sitting there in the cold and wet, his face crumpled up in sobs helped me make a better choice. Eventually we annointed Eli with oil (not really, we just asked about fifteen people to pray that God would cause him to fall into a deep sleep since we had no more faith), I turned off the monitor, inserted ear plugs, and got to sleep for four uninterrupted hours. Then Hannah woke up because she could not breathe, and when Hannah wakes up, so does the rest of the household.

By the end of Wednesday, Eli looked like he had been smacked in both of his eyes, they were so red and purple and puffy from sleep deprivation (I promise, as much as I may have wanted to, I did not smack his eyes, and I thought it was very unfair that he looked like someone did and deprived me of doing it for him). That night Hannah was so exhausted, she fell asleep standing. (see pictures)

On Friday I drove up to Alexandria, a sort of half-way point between our house and my parents’. I left the children at a restaurant, then drove back home. Oh, Grandma Schoep picked them up and took them almost to a different state. Now I miss them because Pika was so very, very cute (I am not quite at the point where I can say that about Eli yet). During the flu stage of her illness, I explained to Hannah that the icky feeling that she felt in her tummy was like the icky feeling that Mommy felt all day long, every day. We talk extensively about this, mostly because Hannah wants everyone to be happy, and when Mommy is not energetic and smiling at her, Mommy is not happy. Mommy would explain that the baby in Mommy’s tummy makes Mommy feel sick, but that does not mean that she is unhappy.

Hannah thinks for a minute. “There’s a baby in Hannah’s tummy too!” (Heavens no, child! I sure hope not for many, many years!) I corrected her: “No, there’s a bug in Hannah’s tummy” and that gave her something new to talk about for a while.

Learning to appreciate parents of 5 kids!

March 19, 2007 on 7:07 pm | In Funny Kid Stories | No Comments

The fourth grade teacher has five kids – all under 1st grade.  The youngest was born in October.  We had the opportunity to babysit them, all five of them, last Friday night.

We started at about 4pm, and took them out to an enclosed (thank goodness) park attached to their apartment.  There were three adults – James, me, and a 16-year-old Peruvian girl who helps out when she has time.  And yet, we still had to keep our wits about us to make sure the 2 year old didn’t climb up the jungle gym without help or get onto the trampoline or swing on the “big kid” swings (because of an accident earlier, his front teeth needed time to heal).  The four-year-old, she just wanted attention, so if anyone wasn’t busy, she was dragging that person off to play something or risking the heights by attempting to climb UP the teeter totter.  The 1st grader wanted to take the infant with her onto all of the toys and the kindergartner loaned his bike to another kid and I had to make sure the kid didn’t wander off with it.  It took three of us, each with a hand on one of the three youngest, to survive the playground.  James said that when I went in to order supper, it got pretty tough.  Besides, the Peruvian only spoke Spanish – it’s hard to make a two-year-old obey even when they do understand English let alone make them listen to Spanish!

Then there was supper – delivered after 45 minutes instead of the expected 25.  When the food finally arrived, I started dishing out vegetables, James started with the chicken.  Then came the “I want french fries” from every corner of the table, followed by “did you eat your salad?” (from James), then to “I want more salad” and “I want Inka Cola (pop).”  And by the time I sat down to eat my quickly cooling food, from the highchair next to me came “pee-pee.”  As I was pulling the 2-year-old (who’s being potty trained) out of his chair, I asked him, “Do you have to go pee-pee?”, then quickly revised my statement to “guess not anymore.”  So a trip to the bathroom to finish up, a trip to the bedroom to replace underwear, and a reminder from the little one to clean the “pee-pee in chair” up before he sat down… yes, then I finally could sit down to enjoy my dinner.  Oh, but wait.  First the 5-month-old has to wake up from his nap, hungry.  Fortunately, the Peruvian had prepared a bottle before she left at 5:30.  But that meant I was feeding two people at the same time.  And then the 2-year-old finished his supper, and wanted me to read to him because his sister was reading so he wanted to also.

And this was on a night when the kids were well-behaved!  Thanks, Mom & Dad!