Well, it's been a really trying couple of weeks, really, the whole month of January. I had a piano student come over on a Wednesday and hack on Eva just once and by the end of the day she was coughing all over the place. That kid gets a little cough and I know that I'm in for a long road. . . RSV here we come. By the next morning she was feverish and was having trouble breathing. Since we've been down this road twice before, it was all very familiar. What wasn't familiar was that we now had someone younger than her to be concerned for as well. We tried our hardest to keep them separate, but who are we kidding. Just the fact that Dad goes to work and there is only one adult to care for two crying babies tells you that keeping them separate was a joke. Combined with the fact that Eva is completely drawn like a moth to a flame to any babe, keeping her away from Ane was a joke. It got so sad for me to have to keep shoving her away from the baby, plus, I found that I had to hold Ane all the time. I didn't realize how much I like to lay her down just to get things done, oh, you know, like taking a shower, going to the bathroom, you know, just the important things! So, that started to get difficult. Two separate times Eva appeared to be getting better only to wake in the middle of the night with a fever so high that the only way we could get it to come down was by giving her a cool bath...at 3 in the morning. Yes, needless to say, we are walking sleep-deprived zombies around here. The next day we did a round of chest xrays and she had developed bronchitis. Ane's cough had changed from croup to RSV, Eli had an ear infection, the following week Malia developed a raging fever that kept her home from school for two days, Lose followed suit two days later, and Dad also caught the fever two days after that. SO. . . we have gone inactive at church for 3 weeks in a row for fear of passing all of this to some poor suspecting family. Health is definitely one of those blessings that I know I take for granted until I no longer have it within my grasp. Heaven's angels must carry parents of terminally ill children in their protective hands because it killed me to watch my children suffer and I only had to do so for one month! So, needless to say, this is why my blog has sat untouched for so long. I have many many things to post, and will try and get started on that, but am still trying to get caught up on all the piles of laundry, missed homework from the kids who missed school, makeup piano lessons that I had to cancel due to the sickies, and extra weeks of teaching Joy School that the other moms so graciously filled in for me. I have to say, I've always felt like the worst mom for feeling this way, but I can only play the role of caretaker of the sick people for so long, and then my patience and compassion tend to crumble. There's something about the whining and crying that after a certain amount of time tends to chip away at my level of sanity. I think the only thing that kept me going was Naki, who somehow has a magical way of keeping me sane in a completely insane environment. Knock on wood, but as of today, the only thing still lingering is a little cough that Eva still has. . . like I said, knock on wood. . . please?
