Plague House

Some of you were asking about the picture of Dan in a mustache--here it is! Now you can see why he doesn't regularly sport one. :) (Although I have to say I do like the full beard look--which he shaved off before this picture.)

This hasn't exactly been our best week. In addition to non-stop rain (I think it's rained every day for almost two weeks now; definitely not normal), we've been plague-ridden. Or so it feels.

On Monday, we noticed Andrew had a cough. But since it wasn't persistent, we let him go to school (also, it was picture day, which may have weighed in that decision!). That night was the back-to-school Bash, which Andrew has been looking forward to since he first heard about it.

The Bash is not our favorite place: lots of people, lots of lines, lots of cheap prizes that Andrew insists on competing for (his criteria for choosing which booth to go to? Not: will I enjoy this, but, will I get a prize?). But we went, because it was a school fundraiser. Dan had never been before, because, knowing how much he hates these sorts of things, I took the older two myself. But this year we thought it would be good for everyone to go.

The event started with a race around the school. After a mis-start (the racers went the wrong way and ran an extremely short route), they were off on a block around the school. I worried about Evelyn, since neither Dan nor I were running, but she did great, coming in solidly in the middle of the pack. Andrew, on the other hand . . . Andrew was the one who insisted on running, but apparently the run only aggravated whatever he was coming down with. When I finally went to find him (after seeing most of the runners pass by), he was at the very end of the pack. I think there were only two kids behind him. And his throat hurt, he said.

So we went to find a snow cone. Andrew ate his, we waited in line for one event (Andrew did a bucket toss thing, Evelyn had her face painted), and then, as it was starting to rain, we decided maybe we should cut things short. Good thing, too--as we were on our way across the blacktop behind the school, Andrew started coughing again. Those of you who know Andrew's hair-trigger gag reflex might be able to predict what happened at this point.

That's right. He spewed. All over the blacktop (in a couple of places!)--and right in front of several of our friends and neighbors. At that point, you couldn't get us out of there fast enough. (We did try to clean up a little, but there's only so much you can do.)

Andrew stayed home the next day. Andrew a little bit sick is not a good patient. He was whiny, bored, and generally disagreeable. (To give you some idea of how bad he was, after Dan had been home only an hour, he said, "I can't handle this anymore.") That was a long day. Since Bubby was out of town, I called our scheduled baby-sitter to cancel (I couldn't expect her to watch a sick kid along with Oliver), and Dan and I traded off while I taught. I cut class short so I could come home while Dan had a dentist's appointment. 

At least we had a beautiful sunset that night, the light shining on the rain-wet pavement.

 

 Only then, of course, Andrew passed on his disease. Wednesday I was pretty worthless--I had a fever, chills, and a horrible sore throat and all I wanted to do was sleep. Of course, that didn't happen: it was early-out day from school, so when I tried to nap while Oliver did, the big kids started fighting and woke everyone up.

And then Oliver got sick. Wednesday night I heard him coughing a couple of times, but he seemed okay the next day, just a little bit of a runny nose. And then Thursday night hit. He woke up around 10:30, wheezing and struggling to breathe. I called the pediatric nurse who was on call at our doctor's office and she asked: is he retracting? yes, he was. Are his  nostrils flaring? I inspected Oliver's face. Yes, they were.

So I took him to the ER, where they diagnosed croup and put him on some steroids. (I was a little surprised--we're old hands at croup, having dealt with it at least once every winter since Andrew was little--and this hadn't sounded like croup to me.)

Friday wasn't much fun either, trying to survive on little sleep (midnight ER visits do that to you) and still recovering from a cold. But we got past the worst of it.

(I caught this picture of Andrew reading to Oliver just before Oliver slipped away).

And yesterday we actually *gasp* had fun. We started with donuts from a new local donut shop, and then all of us went to watch Evelyn play soccer. Thanks to this great article, I was prepared to just enjoy watching her play and not worry about the score. (Good thing, too, because they were outmatched). Evelyn's a funny little player. She's a great teammate and cheerleader, but her physical coordination is still developing. She has this funny run-hop after the ball--and Dan observed at the end that it was clear who the "weakest link" was on their team: after Evelyn sat out in the last quarter, her team scored four goals in a row, their first goals all game. Bubby and Poppy came to watch, too, so we enjoyed being out as a family.

Then we stole away south for some errands in the metropolis and had dinner at the Black Bear Diner. It was nice to get out of town, even if only for a few hours.