This week has been crazy busy. Andrew was sick at the beginning of the week, then Miriam got sick, which meant that I was spending all day and all night nursing them back to health. Literally nursing Miriam almost every hour both night and day; only figuratively nursing Andrew—mostly by nagging him about getting enough fluids.
“I want you to drink this whole water bottle by the time I get home.”
“But I had fluids today.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Ummm…I had oatmeal…and I had to pour water on it.”
This morning Rachel requested oatmeal for breakfast again—we had oatmeal yesterday.
“Sure, I just have to boil some water first,” I told her.
“But, Mom!” whined Rachel, “You did that yesterday! Can’t we just use that water?”
Sometimes we change the words to poems and songs to suit our mood. For example, Rachel has this book of poems that she absolutely loves. The first poem in the book is a poem entitled Singing Time by Rose Fyleman.
I wake in the morning early
And always, the very first thing,
I poke out my head and I sit up in bed
And I sing and I sing and I sing.
Instead of reading it that way, however, this morning I read it like this:
I wake in the morning early
And always, the very first thump,
I poke out my head and I sit up in bed
And I grump and I grump and I grump.
In primary today, Rachel’s friend Katie was spotlighted with Charlie T. Bear. Amiee was the one to introduce her.
“So, this is Katie,” she said, pronouncing Katie as KAY-dee.
“Her name’s not ‘Kay-dee,’” offered her indignant older brother, Tyler. “Her name’s Kay-TEE!”
Amiee was a little taken aback. “Oh, alright then,” she said, “Would you like me to say that over again. This is Kay-Tee, Tyler’s sister.”
He settled back in his chair, well-pleased that his efforts had elicited such a result.
Last night a 3 AM Rachel woke us up screaming, “I need help! Somebody help me! I need to go potty!”
I moaned. Andrew got out of bed to deal with her. He’s great at noticing when I need him to do things—usually after I publicly announce that our children are driving me bonkers, but at least he notices—and he knew that I needed him to get up with Rachel.
He went into her room, but she wasn’t there. She was in…
*drum roll*
As I predicted last night today went much better than yesterday and the day before. It was so good, in fact, that this evening after dinner I had enough patience left in me to let help Rachel make cookies and let her help me do the dishes.
She was thrilled. Making cookies is one of her favorite things to do. And since the last cookies that we made were chocolate chip…so I didn’t have any…I thought it was only fair that we make some non-chocolate cookies. She helped cream the butter (and ate several forkfuls), she helped measure the sugar (and flung about 1/8 of a cup all over the kitchen floor), she helped crack the egg (and got it all over her hands), she helped level the flour with a butter knife (because I wouldn’t let her measure it after the sugar incident) and still managed to get flour all over herself, and she helped mix it all together (and made dough fly all over the place). Somehow I managed to stay sane through all of it.
The longer I think about it the more I’m convinced that God is in control of things. Things that seem like unfair trials and challenges turn out to be just the thing we needed to have happen so that we can get through a harder trial. Take, for example, our recent financial fiasco.
When someone in Florida started charging up our debit card right around Christmastime, we were frustrated.
I woke up grumpy. Going to bed grumpy and worn out and then being woken up by one child or the other all night long meant that I was grumpy the minute I decided to get out of bed.
Rachel met me in her doorway.
“Hold me, Mommy!” she whined.
*shudder*
On our way home from tutoring we ran into Andrew on his way to go tutoring. It was kind of funny to see him walking down the street toward us since that’s not something we usually see.
“Oh, yeah!” I said when I saw him, “You have tutoring tonight as well. Good thing I remembered my key!”
Famous last words.
I pushed the stroller into the entryway of our building and then took out the diaper bag to get out my purse to get at my keys. And, wouldn’t you know it, my purse wasn’t there.
Cruel, cruel irony.
Everyone at our house is sick, except for me. It’s kind of nice but will probably catch up to me in the end. Last night our house echoed with various coughs—Andrew’s hacking from the pillow next door, Rachel’s persistent coughing from her bed, and Miriam’s quiet and pitiful coughing from the bassinet next to our bed. Cough, cough, cough.
