in sickness and in health

This week has been a pretty quiet one for us, particularly as we were housebound most of the latter part of the week (but I'm getting ahead of my story). On Monday, we accompanied Jeni and her kids to a couple of stores while they ran errands, before heading back to Jeni's house for lunch. It's a wonderful thing to live close enough to familly that Andrew can be good friends with so many of his cousins.

Tuesday I can't remember--except that Dan and I made his cousin Jason's recipe for homemade spaghetti--but were apparently a little heavy on the tomato flavor. Oh, and Andrew took a really long nap--almost 3 hours! (Long enough that I had to check after 2.5 hours to make sure he was really still breathing).

On Wednesday, Jeni brought Emi over while she, Samuel, and Jacob had dentist appointments. It was pretty funny to watch Andrew and Emi run around together, as they're so close in age and size that they make pretty good playmates (and actually get along better when it's just the two of them than when Jacob is around to tell them both what to do. The perils of older siblings, I guess). My mom had made a Tinkerbell costume for Emi, but since Emi is often leery of new things, she wasn't initially sure she wanted it. So, I offered to put Andrew in it. Andrew, always pliable, was more than happy to wear the dress (although I doubt Tinkerbell has often been seen wearing a sword). And of course, once she saw Andrew in *her* dress, Emi was all over wearing it herself.





I have to admit, despite being a reasonably fond parent, that Emi looks much better in this getup than Andrew does. (He's just a little stocky to pull off the fairy look).

Unfortunately, our week went down from there. Andrew woke us up in the wee hours of Thursday morning with a wracking cough; a trip to the doctor that afternoon (after Andrew spent most of the late morning and early afternoon feverish and alarmingly lethargic--for him--I've never known Andrew to voluntarily spend so much time just cuddling by my side) confirmed that Andrew had the croup. This meant that he was up every hour or so for the first five hours of the night, followed by a 3 1/2 hour stint (of course, from 12 to 3:30), where he simply wouldn't sleep at all . . . I'm clearly still new at this parenting thing, because watching Andrew struggle to breathe was almost more than I could handle. It's hard to feel so helpless. Dan moved our rocking chair out to the back patio, and we bundled Andrew up frequently and took him outside until his breathing cleared. Luckily, Thursday was our worst night, and he has slowly but steadily improved since then, although he had to stay home from stake conference today because his cough persists.

Yesterday we had our first good snowfall of the season, and, since Andrew seemed to be feeling a little better (and was starting to show the effects of cabin fever), I took him outside while I cleared off the car and shovelled off the driveway. Of course, Andrew insisted on helping me. This went okay (although he quickly lost his gloves), until Andrew tried to take one of the spare snow shovels onto the lawn (I tried to tell him that the grass didn't need to be shovelled off, but apparently I wasn't convincing). By this time, my mom had come out to help me, and, seeing Andrew on the grass, she asked if he had boots on. I started to assure her that he did, but, looking at Andrew just then, I realized that his boots had gotten stuck in the snow and he had just walked out of them! He was pretty startled (and scared) to discover how quickly his feet got wet and cold. Needless to say, we went inside then and let my mom finish the driveway (not much was left then anyway).







Despite the miseries of the last few days, our week did at least end on a good note. Andrew is feeling better, and we had a wonderful, moving stake conference this weekend. The meetings were presided over by Elder Richard G. Scott, who gave a couple of inspiring talks, and the stake presidency was reorganized, which is always an emotional experience it seems. What little was said about the calling of the new stake president (David Terry Warner, C. Terry Warner's son--Justin might be interested in this, since he knows the family) made it very clear that he was called by God. (Apprently President Warner had been impressed that he would receive the calling some time ago; one of the departing presidency members related that, when they told the high council that they were going to be released, President Warner's face went white!). And of course, tonight we got to listen to the First Presidency's Christmas message, so, in all, a nice close to a somewhat stressful week.