It ain't over til it's over.......

I shall now share with you the joy of really bad days

It started at 9:30 PM last night.
J threw up. When he got off the school bus yesterday he told me that his tummy hurt. I forgot about it. Then at bed time he told us his tummy hurt again. It wasn't until he threw up that I recognized that he hadn't really been his normal energetic 5 year old self in the afternoon and evening. He was able to go back to sleep.

At 4:30 AM, B was crying. B kept saying "I want to go to school" I had told J that I would probably keep him home from school, and I figured B thought I would make him stay home from school too, so I reassured him that he could still go to school. At this point J started begging to go to school. He claimed he felt so much better. He loves school. He wanted to go to school. I got back to bed pretty quickly BUT the baby was awake and kicking up a storm. Neither of the boys ever gave me sore spots from their kicking, but this little girl has a couple of favorite spots and I'm pretty sure I have internal bruising.......and when someone is kicking a bruise- it's kind of hard to sleep.

SO, at 5 AM I was trying my best to figure out what to do about J. Keep him home or send him to school. I Googled "Vomiting without Fever" and the first thing that popped up was about how the stomach flu can present as vomiting without fever. SO, I decided to keep him home. Then I kept reading other things. He had only thrown up the one time and there was another article about what to do with a sick child that said to send them to school if they had only thrown up once and then felt fine. So I put it to Facebook- and 90% of respondents said to keep him home. BUT that wasn't what sealed the decision in my mind. The child slept in. he normally is happy and awake at about 6:30 to 7. His brother woke him up at 7:30 and J freaked out in a major way, he was tired. He was staying home.

We did J's homework in the morning and I let B watch some videos about diesel trains on the computer while he waited for our neighbor to pick him up for Preschool. This was a mistake. When the time came for B to leave for school he freaked out. He so rarely throws a tantrum that I'm never quite sure what to do with him. I didn't want to force a screaming child into a car with my really nice neighbor so B stayed home from school too. When B got back inside the house he ran straight to the computer and the tantrum got even worse when I turned OFF the videos. B was sent to his room until he could calm down. In the back of my mind something told me that sending a screaming, barely potty trained, child to his room would not end well.....but I ignored that. A few minutes later when the crying had stopped I opened the his bedroom door and started talking to him about how he made the choice to throw a tantrum and to not go to school and the consequence of that choice was that he couldn't watch any more train videos today.....it was at this point that I realized he was standing near a wet spot. He had wet his pants. Ken called at this point- I had emailed him and told him about B's breakdown and how he was in his room trying to calm down, Ken was calling to give me support.

After we had all calmed down, a not quite dressed again B and J had a snack. Yogurt. I went in the other room for a while to decompress and a happy little B skipped into the room to find me after he was done with his yogurt. He smelled, there was poop smeared on the front of his lower legs and the top of his feet. SOOOOOOO it became bath time. I considered running away, but instead I dipped vanilla wafer cookies in peanut butter.....it was surprisingly good.                                  

J went downstairs to play while B and I colored. I figured B needed some time with Mommy while she wasn't scowling or about to cry. It worked, my happy little B came back, he took his picture of a train downstairs to show J. I let both the boys play with toys downstairs while I tried to get my house in order a little. Dishes were done, laundry was folded. More laundry was washed. Lunch was served and Nursery Rhymes were discussed. I had emailed J's teacher and asked her which rhymes she was talking about during the class today and to my surprise J already knew both of them. He colored some pictures of the rhymes and now I think were done with trying to learn things for today. After-all, I've been awake since 4:30.

What did I learn from today. Sometimes things don't go as you've planned....at all. Sometimes the people in your life are replaced by weird screeching aliens who smear poop on themselves and their kitchen chairs. And sometimes you will be given just enough strength and patience to see past the strange screeching aliens and clean up and keep moving forward until the tilt a whirl that your world has become suddenly stops and almost everything and everyone is back to its normally abnormal self.

Hopefully, in about an hour B is going to go down for his nap, and J and I are going to clean up all the books that got thrown around while he was searching for one of the nursery rhyme books (because the one I wanted to read from just wasn't good enough.) THEN I'm going to take a nap too, while J rests on the couch- Peter Pan might be involved in that adventure. It may or may not work, BUT as I've learned today, It ain't over til it's over, hopefully when this day is finally over, this morning will seem really really funny and the rest of the day will just have been your normal, every day kind of Thursday. Hopefully.