Oh, What a Night!!

Or make that a week!  Let's see, our week has included: 3 hands of bananas, meals consisting largely of starches/breads (rice, bread, crackers, pancakes, waffles, pasta), 2 quarts of applesauce, watered down juice and Gatorade - which Sylvia calls "Gatorwater" ;-) , plain yogurt, a large batch of homemade chicken noodle soup, lots and lots and lots of hand-washing and lots and lots and lots of laundry (not so much "dirty" laundry as much as it was "let's wash these germs away!" laundry).

Yep, a stomach virus. For each one of us.

Poor Sylvia was the first to come down with it Tuesday morning at breakfast. She threw up a few times and was very tired... so much so that she took a morning nap on a pallet of blankets in the dining room (so I could keep an eye on her) while Susannah and I worked in the kitchen. She had her last episode of the day shortly before 5pm and after that was happy and as chipper as a bug in a rug. A few times this winter each of the girls have had a very short-lived (as in, just a few hours) bout with vomiting so when things were still going great for everyone 24 hours later I breathed a sigh of relief and we went on with life.

Then, oh. my. word. Wednesday night I became sick in a way that I cannot remember being sick since I was a kid. Before going to bed Wednesday I felt like I had horrible indigestion, but I had eaten a Spicy Chicken Combo from Wendy's for supper and it just felt like it was really sitting the wrong way. I mentioned to Daniel that if, in fact, I did end up sick maybe he could stay home from work to care for the girls. I'm glad he agreed because that is exactly what happened. I did not sleep much Wednesday night at all and while being sick was "bad" the worst part seemed to be my poor, very pregnant, stomach muscles that took the load of the abuse.

Daniel did stay home on Thursday which was a heroic thing to do. I could not have gotten through the day without him... I don't think. Especially since it turned out that the day started with Sylvia getting sick again at 6am and then developing a horrible, horrible case of diarrhea that resulted in a lot of wardrobe changes and one mid-day bath. I felt badly for Daniel having all of that do take care of in a "single-parent" day, but I certainly wasn't anywhere near able to do all of that (both from lack of sleep and still trying to get to a point of feeling better).  Sylvia didn't have any more vomiting and Susannah had a minor turn of sickness mid-afternoon and that was it. Susannah was perhaps the one that had this bug the easiest!

By Thursday night we were planning for Daniel to go back to work on Friday. My appetite had finally returned, a lot of napping through the day had me feeling better in general, and both girls seemed to be fine. Susannah had one final throw-up in the middle of Thursday night/Friday morning, but even when I got up to assist her I felt like a whole new person!

Then Daniel came home from work on Friday... and by the time it was suppertime he decided it was time to decline food and seclude himself upstairs. Hmm, let's just say that all evening until the girls' bedtime I was making sure we had something with noise going on downstairs!! We watched a movie, sang songs, I played the piano, we read lots of books... it also helped to distract me from knowing how awfully ill my husband was being upstairs. :-(

I slept in the guest bed and didn't get much sleep, but both girls slept the night through. Saturday was a day of recovery for all of us in various ways. Daniel felt mostly back to normal by Saturday evening, but we still opted to stay AWAY FROM PEOPLE and stay home from church yesterday. I think we're all on the other side of this bug now. The girls' digestive systems are still working at getting straightened out so they're still on a limited diet, but at least things are much improved.

I am ready for a new week with normal people, normal food, normal sleep (ahh, glorious sleep!!), normal laundry...