When Mom's Sick, We're ALL Sick.

Hasn't been changed in weeks.

Over the course of the past week, I experienced my first full-on Sicky since becoming a parent. We'd all been ping-ponging the same sniffles and such back and forth, but on the rebound I apparently caught them straight in the jugular.

I woke up one morning freezing cold, achy and bruised, swollen and stuffed o' face, and not really "awake" at all. The kind of sick where you can't even imagine sitting straight up, let alone going to put on some Day Sweatpants. The beginning of the kind of illness where you weep in the general direction of blankets and chairs- or really even the floor- all day long.

I felt awfully sorry for myself, the way I've done in the past whenever feeling Godawful.

Except this time, I was in charge of a perky infant and a toddler already in the process of dumping the entire contents of her closet onto her head. And apparently, they needed food. Something to drink. Maybe a diaper change. And another diaper change. And a third- COME ON, GIRLS.

I spent that first day in a sort of incredulous stupor. When was someone coming for these children? I could barely manage holding my vibrating head still- there was no way I could handle anything other than batting at the Wii mote to start yet another TV marathon on Netflix.

I'm not gonna say that Nora watched TV all day...but it's a fair bet that she knows the entire catalog of PBS, short of Masterpiece Theatre and Antiques Roadshow.

The next day was worse. I couldn't remember if I had nursed Suzy. Nora had oatmeal in her sticky-up hair until she was changed out of that day's pajamas into that evening's. P.J. fielded phone calls punctuated by snarfy deep sighs and unrestrained sobbing. We ate bland mashup dinners, seasoned and microwaved by a gal with no ability to taste, smell, or stir. I couldn't even handle being inside my own skin, so I felt an overwhelming amount of guilt over not being a good parent to the two healthy Littles in my house. (Heck, I was barely being a parent.)

And I felt guilty for getting sick. Like I had let everyone down. We ended up staying home from Nora's gymnastics class- sure, she had been up from midnight to 4am for no good reason and had completely overslept anyhow, but the weight of that still fell on my [melodramatic and achy] shoulders.

We'll never leave the house again, I thought.

I'm relegating the girls to a life of Emily Dickinson-esque confinement, I bawled.

There is food on the floor yet none in the fridge, I whined.

The Fischer-Price people are attacking my face, I fevered.

But I got better. By the next day, even. Because, after barely two days of drowning in an abyss of chills and delirium, I realized that This Was Utterly Ridiculous.

So I mopped the floors. Cleaned the bathrooms. Built a block tower. Found the last puzzle piece. Made some salmon. (For Lent.)

Bathed the children, bathed myself (twice), cleaned the bathrooms again, finished some completely overdue writing...

...And put the darned TV back on.

Priorities.

This is the story of how one day- when things are wonderfully calm and simple- you suggest to your two year-old daughter that you bake something. Brownies, perhaps.

And how she then proceeds to tear apart the kitchen in excitement, looking for wooden spoons, looking for aprons, trying to eat through the cardboard box to see what color the sugar is, etc., etc., etc.

But then you turn on the oven. And, as the room becomes full- maybe overfull, even- of tools necessary (and completely unnecessary) for the act of baking brownies...you notice that the room is becoming full of something else as well.

Smoke.

Thick, black, puffy clouds of burnt toast smoke. Or, to be more accurate, burnt pizza crust smoke. From a section of pizza that had- somehow- fallen off of the frozen dinner from the previous night's meal and ended up incinerating itself way back against the broiler's flames.

So you turn on the oven's vent fan, the kitchen fans, and [inexplicably] the bathroom fan. The windows are opened. The doors are opened. Rags are waved uselessly.

And, through all of this Non Panicky Take Chargitude, the two year-old demands (politely at first) that You Promised We Would Make BrownieCookies.

And you explain (gently at first) that the kitchen is in very real danger of charring to a crisp and, since the brownie-cookin' needs to take place in the kitchen, First Things First.

But she does not jive with your "logic."

So she begins to have a full-on tantrum about the very real lack of baking happening in front of her face. And she proceeds to hit you with a wooden spoon.

And so then you drag the toddler to the Time Out chair- waving her smallish body at the smoke detectors along the way- and have a very timely discussion of Why We Do Not Hit and Why We Need PATIENCE, DAMMIT.

Meanwhile, the infant is sitting nicely in her bouncy seat and staring up, quite possibly preparing for a future epileptic seizure due entirely to a strobe light effect caused by poorly placed track lighting behind the ceiling fan.

But the smoke eventually clears.

And the toddler apologizes- especially when she sees it's Game On for brownies and not so much for fire extinguishers.

And you can fully admit- once you see the infant blinking normally, that is- that maybe you just experience the weirdest three minutes ever.

At least for that afternoon.

Bad. Mom.

That's prolly too big for- oh, she's fine.

YOU feed the baby.

Ignoring both the infant eyeing my wine AND the
toddler reading a prayer book against a radiator.

Hint- If You Give Nora A Sip, Don't Expect It Back.

We're heading back to Chicago in a little bit- and you'll all be thrilled to know that I forgot only the barest minimum of necessities. We made do. (Although Nora might beg to differ, as one of the forgotten items was her hair detangler spray, and Miss Nimbus had to suffer through plain ol' conditioner and combing and yelling.)

As time is of the essence, the car is not even remotely packed, and I'm not entirely certain where Susannah is, I'll just post a smattering of my fave pix from the weekend (so far).

There was a dance party on Saturday night with seven aunts and uncles, seven cousins of Peej's generation, nine cousins of the next generation, (and even two yet to be born cousins- not mine, oh no, not mine- calm down, interwebs). This is a rough count, mind you, and I don't even have pix of this stompy li'l affair. It was too bizzy.

There was a Mardi Gras parade downtown, slightly dampened by the fact that Nora was a) overtired, b) cold, and c) terrified of the clown-like dancers. We left a little early.

But, as always, there was way too much great food, and no shortage of loving arms for Nora and Zuzu.

I even got a nap.

Which will always render any weekend a roaring success.

Malt? Don't mind if I do. (Mini P.J. strikes again.)

Baby Greta and Baby Zuzu- two months apart and holding hands.

Hannah holding the babe- best Mother's Helper EVER.

Stay close, Dad. Those clowns might come back.