In Which Our Life is in Disarray

Oh. Wow. What a weekend.

Guess what? That post on the iron? I wrote that post three days before I put it up and saved it for this weekend, because I had some sort of wicked premonition that things were not going to go well around our house.

I was so right. I’m seriously glad I saved it and posted it Saturday, otherwise you’d have had nothing to read at all from me this weekend! And then your lives would have been empty and pointless, I know. I’m glad I saved you from that fate.

So. Things that happened this weekend.

#1
Two hours from the CA/NV border, Sienna puked all over the rental car. The Ogre called me, stoic as ever, to inform me that they would be later than he expected because Sienna had just emptied the contents of her stomach all over NOT OUR car. Her booster seat and the entire back seat were out of commission because they were covered in vomit. As was her nice black dress (which the Ogre didn’t change her out of after the funeral…???…), her brand new tights, her only nice black shoes, all her stuffed animals, her pillows, her blanket, the Ogre’s nice wooden lap desk and her brand new drawing supplies which the Ogre had purchased for her for this trip.

#2
Charlotte uncharacteristically refused to go to bed Saturday night. This is a child that pants with excitement when we say, “Chars? It’s bedtime.” I’m serious. She loves going to bed. I put it down to excitement over Daddy and Nenna coming home and let her stay up and watch Bend it Like Beckham with me while I made a bracelet.

#3
When Sienna and the Ogre got home, Sienna did not have a fever. I suspected motion sickness or perhaps food poisoning, since she really looked like death warmed over, so I made the Ogre go through her diet for the last two days.

Oh. Good. Heaven.

Before I run you through this, keep in mind that we’ve been sugar and grain free every day except Sundays for the last two and a half weeks. Now. Are you ready?

Sienna ate…

Strawberries

Hot Chocolate

Two Croissants

A strawberry and cream frappuccino

Nerds

Another strawberry and cream frappuccino

and two bites of a sausage and egg sandwich before the vomit ensued.

Now look, in the Ogre’s defense, it was an insane trip. They drove five hours to see some awesome friends at Camp Pendleton, then another hour to the hotel, went to sleep, got up about five hours later to get ready for the funeral, went to the funeral, went to the reception, then got straight back into the car to drive the six hours home.

But…still. Looking at all those pictures makes me want to vomit. Poor kid. After that I was convinced that she was suffering from over-sugared, under-watered, over-tired sickness. So we brushed her teeth and put her and Charlotte to bed. 

The Ogre was beat, so he followed suit shortly after. I stayed up to deal with Liam, and once I got him to bed I finished my bracelet and headed to bed myself. 

Not ten minutes after I had gratefully fallen into bed, looking forward to a night of peaceful slumber after the panic-stricken non-sleep I had suffered the night before, Sienna appeared at the side of my bed. She looked awful, and said she felt awful, so I got out of bed and took her into the living room to check her temperature. 

It was 102.9. She was burning up. I gave her some Motrin and let her lay on the couch since she wanted to lay with me and laying down in her bed would have woken Charlotte. (By this point, it’s about 3 a.m.) An hour later, she was still awake, tossing and turning and pretty much just feeling rotten, so I put on a movie for her and laid down next to her again. I managed to doze off fairly quickly this time and woke up around 5 when I heard Liam wailing from the bedroom. Sienna had finally fallen asleep, so I got up and went to put Liam back down. I fell asleep in our bed until 6:15, when Charlotte woke me up. 

So, ugh. Two hours of sleep. I got up, got Charlotte breakfast, checked Sienna’s temperature (102.5), gave her some Tylenol, got her some water, changed Liam’s diaper, put him in his bouncer, made the Ogre coffee and then hopefully went back to the bedroom to wake him up. Once I related the events of the night and reminded him that even though he was still tired from his trip, he still had gotten eight hours of sleep to my two and five hours of sleep the night before to my three, he got up and let me sleep until ten, at which point he had to get me up so he could go clean out the vomit car and take it back. 

After we returned the car we rented a movie for Sienna, got some crackers and Sprite from Trader Joe’s, and headed home to deal with the poor sick girl. At this point I had sort of assumed that the worst was over. I would put the girls down at a decent hour and go to sleep early myself, the Ogre could go to bed shortly after, and we would all wake feeling refreshed and ready to tackle Monday.

I was wrong. Oh so very, stupidly wrong. 

#4

At 7:30 we decided to put the girls to sleep. Sienna was still feverish and complaining that her ear hurt, so school was out for Monday and the doctor was in. 

We put their pajamas on. We brushed their teeth. We gave them their blessings and said our prayers. And then….

Charlotte became a child I’ve never seen before. A child who wouldn’t go to sleep. 

I do not exaggerate when I say that it took us SEVEN HOURS to get her to stay in bed and go to sleep. After four hours, I was sitting at the kitchen table and realized that something smelled really bad. Then I realized that the Ogre had brought in a bag of vomit-covered clothes the night before and we had both forgotten about them, so they were just sitting there on the kitchen table. 

I’m not even going to describe the nastiness that ensued when I attempted to deal with those clothes. 

Round about midnight I gave up and told the Ogre that I had to sleep, threw the clothes in the wash on SUPER HOT, and headed to bed. Once there, I realized that there was something really wrong because I couldn’t go to sleep. Insomnia hardly ever strikes me, but I just could not sleep. 

At this point I began to suspect that we all had some sort of virus that was making it difficult to sleep, since Sienna woke up and climbed into bed with me and also tossed and turned for two hours at my side. And then, like a rational person, my mind drifted to an episode of House I saw once where a girl couldn’t sleep for seven days and ended up having bubonic plague, so I got up and checked everyone’s armpits. When no buboes appeared, I got Sienna out of bed, handed her over to the Ogre, told Charlotte to go back to bed (again) and then climbed into bed, determined to sleep. 

And I did! I fell asleep for six minutes before Charlotte woke me up. 

Suffice it to say that the entire house finally managed to be asleep by four AM. 

The girls, naturally, woke up at 7. 

I woke the Ogre up at 10 only to discover that he’s very sick. He had to cancel his class today and is currently back asleep. I’m really jealous. 

In fact, everyone in the house is now napping. I’ve reached a level of delirium only previously encountered during finals week in college, and even then I think I felt more stable. I would be napping along with everyone except that Sienna has a doctor’s appointment in an hour and a half, and I know that if I go to sleep now no power on heaven or earth will wake me in time to make it. So I’m blogging instead, and the letters on the screen are beginning to dance. It’s sort of pretty. 

#5

And then, also this weekend, a big, looming, life-altering possibility appeared before us. Meaning that the Ogre and I will be having to make a huge decision about immediate future plans this week, and since we’re all delirious, we could really use some prayers that we’ll at least be clear-headed enough to make a good decision. 

What is it with Lent? I always start off Lent hoping to reach a new level of spiritual maturity, hoping to grow in my understanding of God, hoping to rid myself of certain habits, hoping, hoping, hoping. And then it’s like…I don’t know. It’s like I get hit by a spiritual train. It’s the same, every year. Things come up, making it difficult to keep Lenten sacrifices. Situations come up that make it difficult to trust God. Everyone gets sick and I’m the last man standing, when really I want to crawl under a rock and cry. 

Actually, this is the first time I’ve ever been the last man standing. The Ogre has always been that parent, so maybe it’s the unfamiliarity of this situation that’s so alarming to me. Or maybe I’m just extraordinarily sleep-deprived and am no longer making sense, just rambling. So I think I’ll stop now.

I sincerely hope that all of your Mondays are off to better start than mine.