Sickos

To sum up my life lately, see above.

My kids have been playing ping-pong with the flu.

Ava had a super high fever about one week before Christmas, it wouldn't go away with just tylenol and I had to take her to the doctor. Perk of living in small town: doctors offices are closed at Christmas time. So at 10 pm on a Wednesday, Ava and I went to the hospital emergency room. Other perk of small town life: hospital is small, so the er is small, so the wait time isn't half of what it would be in a bigger town. Hospital smallness aside, we still waited three hours, thanks in part to a belligerent drunk guy and someone with a broken knee. Ouch. Final diagnosis: ear infection. Reason I know advil they gave her worked: She wanted to play after it kicked in. At one am. In the hospital.

About a week after starting her amoxicillin she was back to her normal bratty self. Hooray! I'll take bratty kids who are into everything anyday over a sick feverish baby who wants me to hold her 24/7. Then Alana went to a Christmas concert with my sister and came home just wanting to sleep. Reason I know she really didn't feel good: going places with my sister and her ratboy cousins is Alana's dream destination. She has to really feel bad to want to come home and sleep instead of play with her ratboy cousins and admire her baby cousin Brinley.

After a couple days of coughing and fever, I took Alana to the doctor. Her regular doctor was on vacation, so we went to a walk-in clinic, because they weren't going on vacation until after Christmas. Diagnosis: a virus. A couple of days later, luckily right before Christmas, she was feeling better.

Christmas day Ava woke up with a huge rash all over most of her body, which was so dark and prominent at first we thought she had chicken pox. After David talked to his boss, who is a pharmacist, we came to the conclusion that she probably had an allergy to amoxicillin. We stopped giving her meds, and her symptoms were gone so we were hoping to be in the clear. No such luck. Monday after Christmas her fever came back, so we returned to the hospital. We were in and out of there in just under an hour, which is a Christmas miracle. Diagnosis: ear infection came back with a vengeance, it was now in both ears.

After a few days of new antibiotics, given to Ava against her will, she got better again. On New Years Eve Alana started to feel sick, and just wanted to sleep all day.

We went to dinner at the Olive Garden, without our sick kids, where I ate the most delicious dessert ever, which David kept stealing bites of, even though he said he was full after his Tour of Italy. That was the last of our fun for a few days, because Alana has been sick since then. To her credit, she is the most well-behaved sick kid ever. She just wants to sleep. She makes no demands. Her only downfall is her absolute refusal to take medicine. She will occasionally take a Triaminic thin strip or chewable tylenol, but other than that we have to hold her down and force her to take anything, with is challenging.

Yesterday Ava's fever came back for awhile, which left her wanting to be held constantly for about 6 hours. When it broke she was ready to party again, even though it was 9 pm. But she's okay so far today, and for that I'm grateful.

Alana has been passed out all day, with the exception of her request for cereal, but she fell asleep right after she received it. She is still coughing like crazy and refusing to take medicine.

The past couple of weeks have left me extra grateful for the good health my ladies usually experience. Ava has never been sick before now, and she is almost 17 months. That's not a bad track record. Alana has only been sick a handful of times before, but never anything serious. By the time they're both healthy I will be in need of a vacation. A good, fun, allyoucaneat, buy some new clothes, count down the days until then and pack a week in advance cause I'm so excited vacation. Until then, I just want to sleep through the night a couple of times and I'll be fine.