Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we headed out to South Dakota to see Becky’s relatives. On Saturday afternoon, while wearing a smile, Amelia started throwing up out of nowhere. She did this three or four times throughout the afternoon. This was pretty odd since she seemed happy and had all her color. She threw up again early Sunday morning, but she was fine the rest of the day Sunday.
So we took the kids to daycare on Monday with some concern over Amelia’s well-being. I called Brandi at 11am and everything was going fine, so I didn’t worry anymore. At about 3:10 as I was sitting at my desk, I got a call from Brandi – Amelia had just thrown up. I was concerned, but I didn’t immediately go get Becky to head home (we drive together to work most days). Well, 5 minutes later I got another call from Brandi – this time Katie had thrown up. All right, now I had to track down Becky wherever she was to make the trek home. When we got to Brandi’s house, Katie looked at white as a ghost and she barely said a word (that’s very strange for Katie). Amelia looked like she was fine, but obviously she wasn’t doing great. On the way home I called the nurse hotline and they said if a baby has been throwing up for 24 hours or more, we should bring her in to the walk-in clinic. So we headed there immediately. While at the doctors office, Katie threw up waiting in line to register. Then she threw up as soon as the nurse saw us (all over me).
The doctor came in to check on the kids and said it sounds like they both have the flu. He checked Amelia’s ears and found she had an ear infection in both ears. So that gave Amelia the following ailments – 2 ear infections, the flu, a cold and she was getting a tooth in. She was holding up remarkably well. We decided she had better get a shot to relieve her ear infections since taking the medicine would further upset her stomach. The rest of the night was pretty miserable as they were both suffering mightily. Becky started to get sick that night too. I went to sleep in the other bedroom to see if I could avoid the flu (and Katie took my spot in our bed). Well, that strategy failed about 1:30 when I woke up sick too. I was up the rest of the night feeling really ill. So now we all 4 were sick.
I had customers who came to town for a training class this week, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet them and go out for drinks with them Tuesday evening as I sat and suffered all day. I did get a chance to watch daytime TV all day, which is something I don’t need to do again anytime soon. Thankfully Becky was feeling well enough to manage the kids, although there was a lot of sitting around and watching Dora that day.
By Wednesday we were all feeling back to normal, so I got a chance to meet my customers and the girls got a chance to see their friends. Unfortunately the flu got passed around daycare, so pretty much everyone ended up with it over the week.
On Thursday night our home was featured in our local Holiday Home Tour. On Tuesday I was starting to think we might not be able to pull it off if three of the household would have still been sick, it probably wouldn’t have been a good experience for the visitors. Becky made it home by 4 for the beginning of the tour and all together we had 50-60 people trek through the house. Their comments usually included something about how big the house was and how cool the projector was. Every single person who came through the house was a woman, and most of them said they didn’t want their husbands to see the projector downstairs. The Home Tour gave us a good excuse to clean up the house so for one night we can say our house was completely put together.
Eric's space 