Bit by bit we're getting better

Welcome to the land of the living! We seem to have kicked this bug and are on the mend (and I didn't even ever throw up (famous last words, right?))! I'm no longer surrounded by zombies—I can tell because of the messes made today (toys and food were being pulled out left and right), the noise level (which increased by several decibels), and the overall lack of vomit I had to deal with.

Rachel stayed home from school just to make sure she was 100% well. I think she'll be going to school tomorrow. She read Harry Potters 1 & 2 today and started the third.

Miriam played with lego and coloured pictures for the majority of the day.

Benjamin got into everything and did some pretend play. He's watched Cars once (technically it was Cars 2) and he's already identified Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater from our collection of matchbox cars (which are technically all Rachel's). For some reason he also singled out Chick Hicks—perhaps because that's the only other car we have with eyes. They're all sitting on my desk right now.

He and Miriam played puppies today (a lovely game where they crawl around the house and pant at things (because our puppies don't bark (I didn't even come up with that but I can't tell you how much I love it))). He also put every baby doll in the house to bed in his bed and then went around the house shushing everyone. It was hilarious. He was running from room to room, putting his little finger to his pink lips, and hissing, "Shhhhhhh!" He repeated his shushing rounds several times.

We hung another load of laundry out to dry and swung on the swing set for a while. I took Miriam and Benjamin to the store where we bought gatorade and bananas and applesauce and oyster crackers and ginger ale. Oh, and several boxes of valentine cards 50% off. I always wonder what the cashier thinks when people come through the line with gatorade, bananas, apple sauce, and saltines. Probably something along the lines of "Don't breathe on me."

Benjamin and I took a 2.5 hour nap together (it was a rough night—he wanted to nurse all night and technically I'm trying to convince him that it's time to wean but he wouldn't drink anything yesterday except when he nursed and at the moment it seemed that becoming dehydrated was a bigger problem than worrying about whether he's going to nurse until he's seventeen). Miriam assembled and disassembled lego creation after lego creation (she loves following directions as well as creating her own) and Rachel read on the back deck. No one asked for a show to be put on once today (they must've gotten enough screen time in yesterday to last them for a year).

I was absolutely shocked to find that it was 5:00 when I woke up.

Andrew worked from home today (he sent emails out to his teachers and one of the teachers he TAs for wrote back and said, "Yes, please don't come to campus today!") so he clocked out and made dinner (chicken broth and noodle soup) while I tidied up and convinced Benjamin that waking up from his nap wasn't the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.

After dinner Andrew and I had temple recommend interviews at the church, which meant we had to bring our newly-recovered family out in public. Rachel wore her pyjamas, with her hair in a wild rat's nest, Harry Potter 3 stuck under her arm. Miriam wore the same outfit she wore yesterday, including the braids, which were by this time quite frizzy. Benjamin put on pants for possibly the first time for the day. He wore a pair of Miriam's pink socks (I don't know what it is with that boy and coveting Miriam's socks).

Andrew, who seemed to have the worst time recovering from this bug, showered (thank goodness!) and put on his Sunday clothes. I slipped out of my jeans and into a plain black skirt. I even brushed my hair.

We were a good looking crew!

Wednesdays is our ward's night with the building—there are four units in our building and we take turns using it for weekday activities (such as youth activities, cub scouts, basketball practice, and so forth)—so we got stopped a few times by friends checking in on us (at a safe distance), wanting to know if the Heiss family had recovered. I'm sure we probably looked a little worse for wear but we're certainly on the mend.

We're starting to play a little harder, to eat a little heartier and in time I trust we'll be in full heath again.

...Just in time for the next illness to roll around, I'm sure!

Carry on! Carry on! Carry on!

Given the past couple of days I spent with Benjamin, I was easy on myself when I wrote up my to-do list last night. I had to get the garbage and recycling to the curb. I had to do some laundry. Those were the only two things I was going to make myself do . I added "keep calm, carry on" just to remind myself to not freak out when things got frustrating. Go big or go home, right?

Everyday life

Where do I even begin? I feel like I haven't written for days but it hasn't been that long at all, really. That just goes to show how frustrating things have been lately.

Nothing out of the ordinary has happened, really, unless you count Benjamin's unusual level of grumpiness. He's been yelling about stuff all day long. For a quick example, we were reading a bedtime story this evening (just one because my patience was running thin) and he noticed some cars in the very first picture that he really liked.

He was perfectly happy while I was reading that page but when it came time to turn the page he quickly became very upset.

"Car! Car!" he shrieked in my ear, throwing his body against the back of the couch, slamming his body into my shoulder, jumping up and down—you get the picture.

"Do you want to look at the cars a little while longer?" I asked. "There are so many of them! Let's count them: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven! Seven cars! What colours are they? There's a red one, and a blue one, and a green one, and a black one..." and you get the picture.

When we were finished discussing every detail about the cars, when we'd finished admiring their wheels and talking about which house each car belonged to, when we'd stroked them all and made vrooming noises, then I said, "Alright, let's see what's on the next page!" The girls were getting antsy to hear what happened next (it was a ghost story!).

So I turned the page and, "Car! Car! Car!" Benjamin fussed about those cars for several pages until I finally let him turn back to look at the cars again while I went to his room to dig up a board book we have featuring all sorts of trucks: bulldozers, forklifts, dump trucks, etc.

He flipped through that for a few minutes and sometimes paid attention to the story I was reading and sometimes still fussed about turning back to the first page to admire those cars parked up and down the street.

Barbies and Bonkers

Two and a half snow days preceding a weekend has been a little tough on my sanity. We've done a lot of playing outside and a lot of playing inside and every now and then I've rallied the troops and we've done some chores together. But honestly, we were starting to go a little crazy by today. Or at least I was.

Snow days are different from ordinary days off of school because there's nothing to do. The city literally shuts down so the only thing to do is play in the snow and that's all fine and dandy except that it's cold and it's wet and it generates a ton of laundry and muddy footprints. And then the snow melts and you're left with mud and, if it's today, a ridiculously cold wind. It was too windy to enjoy playing outside and Daddy took the car to school today (a make up day for one of Duke's snow days) so we were stuck inside with each other all day. Again. And things got intense.

So I pulled out a box of Barbies from my childhood that I've kept tucked away for however many years (but first I made the girls clean up their entire room, including their closet). They were so excited to explore the contents of that box. Inside are the Barbies I had as a child as well as the Barbies my mom played with as a child, a lovely collection spanning from the 1960s to the 1990s. The girls have a few Barbies of their own, of course, so today they were playing with 50+ years of Barbies.

Toothless

I sent the girls off to brush their teeth and Rachel returned much sooner than expected. She hadn't brushed her teeth yet but she'd wiggled her loose tooth a bit and had to come show me how loose it was now. It was incredibly loose, hanging-on-by-a-thread loose.

Thawmageddon!*

This afternoon Andrew posted a link to some geeky valentines so I followed the link and then sent him the "I love you more than free wifi" one with a special note telling him that I was happy to be "snowed in" with him again today and playfully joked that our relationship would probably survive even if we had to live without internet for the day.

A few short hours later we heard a tremendous BOOM. Our friendly neighbourhood transformer had blown. The power was out, essentially forcing us to live without internet for the afternoon.

We survived. But just barely.

It was actually a lovely day—high fifties; clear, blue skies; brilliant sunshine—we headed outside to splash in the puddles since that's basically all that's left of "the worst snowstorm to hit the area since 2002." Just to remind you, that storm was raging through Wednesday and Thursday. It is now Friday.

Behold the terrible aftermath:

Igloo

After the freezing rain we got last night, the snow was perfect for building an igloo today! It had a lovely crunchy layer on top that we cut through with a butter knife to make bricks. The northerner in me would like to point out that I used to walk around on top of snow banks that had a crisp enough layer to keep me from falling through. The crispy layer we got down here only held Benjamin's weight—and only until it warmed up and things got a little slushier.

We had great success with our igloo walls though we couldn't ever get our ceiling to hold.

Not ranting about snow

The kids were all so excited for the snow. We had to pretend that it wasn't snowing and that we weren't going outside to play in order to get Benjamin to go down for his nap. He's gone from being terrified of the snow to being quite in love with the stuff. He's invented a sign for it and everything.

After he was asleep the girls hurried into their snow gear and trotted off to the backyard where they happily played Olympics for the duration of Benjamin's nap.

The most popular event was the luge/skeleton down the slide:

Snow ranting

School let out early today due to the impending snow storm. This time, however, their predictions were correct. Instead of waiting 6–8 hours for the first flake to drop after Rachel got off the bus the flurries began within a half hour. And they weren't lying about how quickly it would accumulate, either. We got about an inch an hour for five hours. It's been pelting us with ice pellets for the past couple of hours and we're supposed to have a "wintery mix" all night long and all day tomorrow.

Andrew left campus as soon as he heard his classes were cancelled—he didn't want to get stuck in the traffic! We had friends stuck for hours in their cars—some up to five, even seven hours. It's nuts!

Now, I'm not sure this is necessarily due to the weather. A lot of it has to do with the general panic that ensues whenever it storms here. Granted, this is a big storm for these parts. However, it was seriously not that bad when we were out walking. I know the north has snowplows and other goodies like that but honestly, it's not like it snows and then snow plows magically take it all away.

Orem, for example, has fifteen snow plows for 529 lane-miles of road to maintain. It takes constant vigilance for 15 snow plows to keep the roads clear—and even then driving on unplowed roads isn't exactly unheard of.

During the last snow storm I search high and low for any other such document for any southern city—just for comparison's sake—but I gave up after a few futile searches. Tonight, however, I honed my search terms and found the "Snow Removal and Ice Control Policy" booklet for Burlington, North Carolina.

Melt my heart

You should have seen Miriam's face light up when Rachel presented her with this valentine she made at school today:

It says:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

We are t[w]o sisters,

and I love you.

There's a picture of a rose and a violet, and of Miriam and Rachel holding hands. Miriam's reaction was beyond adorable. She gave Rachel the sweetest hug.

I live for moments like this.

Fast forward to a good hour after the kids had been put to bed and this is what you'd see:

Benjamin wandered out of his room—carrying his favourite dolly—to let me know that he was feeling lonesome in his bedroom.

That doll he's holding has gained VIP privileges in this house. We need to know where it is at all times.

I neglected to retrieve it from the doll stroller when I put Benjamin down for his nap this afternoon but I didn't think he'd mind. Little did I know how attached he'd become to this doll.

"Baby," he requested as I tucked him in.

"Here you go," I said, grabbing the Cinderella baby doll from the floor and handing it to him.

"No baby," he said, pushing Cinderella away. "Baby! Pease? Baby? Pease?" he begged.

"This is a baby," I insisted.

"No!" he cried. "Baby! Pease Baby! Pease! Pease!"

"Is this not the right baby?" I asked. "Is that the problem?"

It was the problem. The right baby is the one he's holding in the picture. We had to wander around the house to find it before he could go down for his nap. His little pleading "please, please!" was impossible to say no to.

He's just too cute for his own good.