Nightmare Weekend

Well, our home has been nothing like an En Gedi this weekend! King Jo and I dealt with goodbyes with the neighbors, taking our kids and 3 neighbor kids to a Reformation party on Oct. 31st, and then getting the worst stomach flu of our entire lives! Ever since Jer was born and an awful flu hit a day or two after we brought him home, we have had the same thing each year around his birthday (which is why last year's birthday party was cancelled). This year, I sincerely hope we can still have his racecar birthday next Saturday since we got the stomach flu a week earlier this year and hopefully are completely done with it in our family and have plenty of time to thoroughly sanitize everything! November 1-14 is a BAD time to have a baby in this town! I hope we can break this yearly cycle next year!

Anyhow, King Jo and I have never been so sick in our lives and I lost 9 pounds overnight and then the following night he got it and lost almost as much in a night. He's a six-foot guy that got down to 149 people!!!! Thankfully by the time he got it I was able to sit up and talk a bit so I was able to get the kids a simple supper and get them to bed and take over being the single parent for a day. Our friends Jesse and Shiloh took Ali to Sunday School, Church, and then home for lunch and a movie and this helped us out IMMENSELY on Sunday when King Jo was resting and I was trying to rest/doing laundry like a madwoman and caring for the boys. Our kids had had a lighter stomach flu two weeks before we did so they weren't feeling icky too thankfully. In fact, when Jer got it a week ago, I was carrying him around in my Ergo since he wasn't feeling well and wanted to be close to me and he proceeded to throw up a few times all down my neck and back. Then, when I was showering he got his daddy, who was holding him. Ali had gotten it a week before Jer and threw up all over my friend Amy's house when she was having a playdate there (I had no idea she wasn't feeling well. Poor Amy!)
Fun days at our house!

Here are some lessons I have learned from this sickness:

*A reminder to cling to God. Every trial is a reminder, but it is especially so when all you can do physically is cry out, "God help me!!!"

*It really is true that spirited kids absorb the stress from their family and act their worst when you need them to act their best. Being patient with a spirited child at these times is the greatest mental exercise in patience EVER! Oddly, my friends claim she was a little angel for them at their house!

*Even though God didn't answer our prayers to make the uncontrollable vomiting stop, He did allow our sickness to happen on a weekend so we could both be home and help one another and not miss work. He did allow it to happen in time for us to still have a birthday party for Jer this year. He did give us good friends who are willing to help. He allowed Justus to be a little angel for us all weekend and sleep a HUGE chunk one night.

*It's okay to not honor your husband's orders in some instances and refuse to listen to him. ("Just put me out of my misery Lindsey! Get a gun and just end it!")

*I'd rather be puking in freedom than healthy in prison. Even when I was on the verge of fainting and laying in the bottom of our shower I thought of Hannah and knew that she'd give anything to be home with her kids and family even if she was in agony with the stomach flu.

*Sometimes marriages' most magical moments aren't in the candlelight dinners and in the heat of passion but in cleaning out your spouse's barf bucket, serving them when you just want to be served, and in coaching them through when they feel like they can't take any more.

*It's possible to still nurse a baby when you have vomited and had diarrhea for about 14 hours straight and you think there couldn't possibly be a drop of water left in your body. Justus so far has no signs of illness either; hopefully the immunities in breastmilk will protect him. There's nothing like nursing a baby while throwing up in the barf bucket that is laying on top of him!



Thanks to all of you who prayed for me when you saw I was sick on facebook! Thanks to Laura, a friend in MN and blogreader who sent me a package which considerably brightened our miserable weekend. She had promised me a Christmas dress set for Ali and I that she no longer wanted and it's so cute! I'll post pics of us in the dresses eventually! She also sent a couple of jars of homemade jam and a HUGE stack of coupon inserts! I haven't been able to buy the paper much in the last few months and when I do, there are never any coupons in it that week, so this was a big blessing indeed!