In which I complain

I cleared the table from Monday's dishes last night after I finally ate dinner...at 1:00 am.

Zoë threw up on me at 3:30 am, about a half hour after Andrew came to bed. So we made a repeat of the night before and he slept on the couch.

Miriam barely made it to school on time.

Rachel stayed home from school sick.

Benjamin was nothing but a bother all day. He is going absolutely stir crazy.

Zoë napped for a grand total of fifteen minutes at lunch and another half hour at dinner (which was PB&J for the second night in a row for Benjamin and Miriam (Rachel and I had leftover chicken soup, which I made on Monday)).

I got zero naps. I pulled an all-dayer.

Most of my day was spent with Zoë literally tied to my back while doing a ridiculous amount of laundry once again because we're still puking over here.

I had a two-hour rehearsal again this evening and we dragged the whole family to the stake center (don't worry—the sickies were quarantined away from the general populace) because it's not in my driving bubble and I wasn't able to get a ride with anyone else.

When I went to get her out of her car seat I put my hand into a lovely poop-splosion.

Zoë is still awake with no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Andrew is still working on his papers. I'm supposed to edit them.

So here we are, it's midnight-thirty and bedtime is no where in sight.

And I just wanted to whine a bit. But, really, it's okay.

My friend Marian has some stomach thing at her house as well. She took her littlest guy into the ER for stitches on Sunday night and her biggest guy into the ER for dehydration (technically, I suppose, for rehydration) today.

As tired as I am of this week...I'm glad I had my week and not hers!

Dancing (until you see stars)

I don't audition well.

I know this because my ballroom coach once told me so. She still put me on the team because she'd been my teacher the year before and knew I'd polish up well. And because, she once pulled me aside to say after I'd suffered a disappointment, she also doesn't audition well.

And that's fine, because, frankly, I'm okay with not ever being the star of the show. And I'm fine with not being a professional ballroom dancer today (though maybe that looked like fun to me once). Sometimes, though, it would be nice to show what I can actually do at an audition rather than looking like an idiot.

I lectured the girls about this before we tried out for the musical. I told them that they were to give it their all. They were to sing with gusto, and if the casting director told them to jump, they'd say, "how high?"

And then we all three went up on stage and looked like idiots.

Seriously.

Because apparently looking like an idiot is genetic.

The casting director was like, "Can you bark for me?"

Miriam said, "No," and was not cast as a puppy.

Rachel said, "Arf?" and surprisingly was cast as a puppy (because she seriously just said, "Arf?" it didn't sound like a dog at all; she just forced those phonemes out in a row and smacked a question mark on the end. "Arf?" I suppose they thought they could work with that).

I was put in the easiest dance sequence, which was a little depressing because I can dance.

Costume happenings

I'm not finished with Rachel's dog mask yet—and won't for a while now because I don't want her to try it on until after she's better—but I'm quite happy with how it's coming together. We saw the idea on Etsy, didn't want to spend $15 (+S/H) for a few pieces of felt and decided to attempt it ourselves. We worked out the pattern on paper and then transferred it to felt (scraps that I got from a friend) and, so far, it seems to be coming together just fine.

And another one gone, and another one gone...Another one bites the dust

Poor Andrew stayed up until around three o'clock this morning working on a couple of papers that he has to submit tomorrow. I went to bed with Zoë around one o'clock (after admittedly staying up too late working on a dog costume). At 5:30 in the morning I was shocked awake when Zoë turned into a fire hydrant of vomit (one of the dangers of co-sleeping, I suppose).

"Andrew," I hissed, "Zoë's got The Sickness!"

I don't know why I was whispering, precisely. The darkness or the hour or the fact that we'd all been blissfully asleep seconds before seemed to call for it.

"I have to take a shower," I whispered. "Can you fix the bed?"

What I wanted was fresh sheets. What I got was a towel over the vomit and Andrew's side of the bed (he left to sleep on the couch...again (he slept out in the living room with Benjamin and with Miriam while they were sick and last night was his first night two hours back in his own bed)). As it turned out fresh sheets would have been a real waste since Zoë would go on to throw up about ten times.

I grabbed a stack of towels from the cabinet and put one underneath her. When she'd throw up, I'd switch it out for a new one. She and I stayed in bed until around noon, sleeping, and vomiting, and just lying there miserable while a pile of dirty towels mounted behind us. Benjamin did a great job fending for himself after I put a show on for him.

Peek-a-boo and throw up

We had a fool-proof plan for rehearsal on Saturday. I've mostly been taking Zoë with me, which is fine when we're just singing but not-so-fine when I'm supposed to be dancing. She's clingy so I end up dancing with her because she's entered that lovely stranger-danger age and no one but Mommy (and sometimes Daddy or Rachel or my friend Laura (for whatever reason Zoë adores Laura)) will do. That makes dancing hard.

So we decided that I will take Benjamin to rehearsal because he'll happily play in the nursery, and Zoë would be Daddy's shopping buddy. See? Fool-proof.

But then Benjamin started throwing up on Friday night so Andrew stayed home with him and I took Zoë to rehearsal again.

Andrew stayed home with Benjamin yesterday and I took the girls to church. We even stayed for choir, but on the way home Miriam announced that she wasn't feeling well. She made it home and managed to slip into her pyjamas before she started throwing up.

While we were skyping with my mom Miriam put on quite the show, proving to Naanii that she was sick, sick, sick. I'm sure Naanii appreciated watching her throw up and throw up and throw up right there on camera (Andrew's parents sure missed out).

Motherhood and toilet seats

As of today, Zoë has a grand total of seven teeth. She's also sporting a brand new goose egg because gravity is really tricky to figure out.

Benjamin still wets the bed every night but is finally starting to figure out how letters work. He is full of energy all the time. Even when he's sick.

Miriam has memorized her part for the musical frontwards and backwards. She listens to the soundtrack on repeat all night long. (And sometimes she listens to one song on repeat all night long and wakes up in the morning wondering why it's stuck in her head. But I know why...because it's usually stuck in my head as well and for the very same reason.)

Rachel's entering that tricky stage of life where her friends are always feuding and math has gone from addition and basic geometry (name that shape!) to multiplication and fractions. In short, life is starting to seem a whole lot more complicated than it once was.

And I'm right in the middle of it all.

I wanted to be here.

All the feels

Miriam busied herself with some writing notes this evening. First she made a get-well card for Benjamin, who is still sick. He got to leave the house today but only to pick me up at Home Depot (summary: I got a ride to play rehearsal with Marian but she had to go shopping on the way home so Andrew met us there to pick me up (and had to drag all the kids with him)), but he won't be going anywhere tomorrow.

He was so sad when we told him he would be missing church tomorrow. He was even sadder when we wouldn't let him have any strawberries. We saved some for him for when he gets better but we weren't about to give him strawberries just so he could throw them up again! What a waste!

Ever-empathetic Miriam felt bad that he felt bad and made him this card to cheer him up:

Project Linus

I never wrote a post about how we did with our goals from last year (even though Andrew made me a nice pretty graph showing how we did not meet our walking goal) and I never formally declared my resolutions for this year either.

Part of me thinks that's because "keeping a baby alive" is a lofty enough goal but another part of me knows that it's kind of laziness. I've been thinking about goals. I just haven't formalized them.

One of the goals I was thinking of attempting this year was to do a service project every month. I had January and February covered with milk donations and I've been looking for other easy (ie. able to accomplish with limited funds and four children) service projects. I have a few up my sleeve for later in the year (ie. after the musical is over) and I'm totally going to count Trading Tables in April, but I didn't having anything planned for March.

Enter Relief Society.

At enrichment meeting last night we talked about scattering sunshine and tied fleece blankets for Project Linus. We didn't finish all the blankets, though, so I volunteered to take one home for the girls to help me with (not being sexist but ageist—I will welcome Benjamin's help tying fleece blankets in the future when he's older and less infuriating three). I cut the fringe last night after the kids got to bed (because of course they were all still awake when I got home) and Rachel and Miriam helped me tied the knots when they came home from school.

Q: How does one wake up with vomit in their hair?

A: They throw up in their sleep.

I swear this child understands zero bodily function cues.

Like, no wonder he still wets the bed like crazy! I just watched him throw up in his sleep!

How does he even...?

My tummy says...

Dinner didn't manage to satiate Benjamin's little tummy today. Although he ate plenty he was begging for more food before we'd even cleared the table.

"Dessert! Dessert!" he chanted. "I want dessert!"

"We're not having dessert tonight," I said.

"But I promise I want dessert," he said.

And I totally don't doubt that, but it didn't change the fact that there was nothing for dessert.

Miriam finished reading Harry Potter 5 this week and was super excited to get to watch the movie. She and Rachel were going to stay up together and watch it after Benjamin went down for bed (because obviously that movie is too scary for a three-year-old, right?), but after stories he didn't really want to get into bed.

"I'm so, so hungry!" he told me, rolling around on the floor. "My tummy is saying it wants more and more food!"

"I think your tummy is saying it's ready for bed," I said, walking him back to his bed. I started singing  a lullaby to him, patting his tummy to the beat of the song since he doesn't like bedtime tickles like the girls do (they both want back rubs every night; Benjamin loathes back rubs).

"Don't do that, Mommy," he said, pushing my hands away. "My tummy says to stop that."