In Sickness …
Now that was a lousy night. I think you will forgive me if this is a post without any photos, or at least by the time you get to the bottom of the post, you will thank me for not posting any pictures. Let me start at the beginning…
I got home from work to find my daughter, Shaelyn, lying down in her bed. This was a little disconcerting and the first sign of trouble because I knew she had lots of homework to do. So for her to be in her bed lying down when she should be doing homework, was the first sign of a bad night. Shaelyn absolutely hates not getting her homework done and even panics over getting it done in time and correctly. My other daughter, Kaleigh, informs me that Shaelyn is lying down because she isn’t feeling well. I speak to my wife Shannon next who tells me that Shaelyn is having stomach aches and a headache.
Uh oh.
A little later it begins.
Shaelyn is crying in the bathroom where she has just thrown up (I told you you didn’t want pictures). She managed to make a mess and in her normal style she is panicking about the mess, not about having just thrown up. To add to this Shannon was out of the house leaving just Kaleigh and I to deal with it. Kaleigh isn’t difficult, she is absorbed in playing with her Barbie’s from Christmas (ok maybe a picture of that could have gone here, but I was a little busy). I get Shaelyn calmed down and start to run her first shower of the evening (yes I said first, so you know where this is going). As I am dealing with that, Shannon phones to find out how things are going. I’m a little abrupt on the phone 
wanting to get back to Shaelyn. Shannon comes home to help clean up the bathroom while I am making sure Shaelyn is ok in the shower.
After the shower she curls up on the couch and just lies there for awhile. Shannon sits with her to keep her calm and to help her out when needed. During the next few hours, the bucket is used pretty frequently. While this is going on Shannon and I start to make a plan for the next day as to who is going to stay with Shaelyn and working out a plan so we can both do what we need to at work and get Kaleigh to school.
What’s that saying about the “best laid plans of mice and men”?
We figure we have everything under control and have Kaleigh nicely tucked into bed after I read with her a story about some kind named Buzz and his pet fly named Fly Guy. Actually she read the story to me. So we settle in for the rest of evening just keeping an eye on Shaelyn.
A few hours later and Shannon calls me upstairs. Kaleigh is in the bathroom doing her bit to catch up to Shaelyn in the illness department. And thus it began. The rest of the evening was dealing with one child or another using their individual buckets to the best of their abilities. However, around midnight Shaelyn called it quits and fell asleep not to wake up again until the morning. Meanwhile her sister kept going until about 3:30am.
But that wasn’t the end of it for me.
At one point while dealing with Kaleigh, I noticed Shannon was no longer there. That’s because she was in the other bathroom doing her part to catch up to the kids. So there I was all night bouncing from one girl to the next checking on them, making sure everything was ok. Oh yeah and poor Kaleigh had to add a nose bleed to her problems. Luckily she gets them frequently enough that she knows how to handle and deal with them. She is quite the opposite of her big sister, she is calm and cool and quietly goes about her business when she isn’t feeling well. She wants Mom or Dad to be with her, but there is no anxiety or panic going on. Eventually Kaleigh fell asleep for the night, so then I was left with Shannon constantly getting up out of the bed and running to the bathroom.
I think I finally was able to get to sleep just after 5:30 am. The alarm went off at 7:30 am. Of course, as any parent knows, you never really fall into a deep sleep while the kids around you are sick. Additionally, I am lying in bed just wondering when it will be my turn to run to the bathroom.
Thankfully it hasn’t happened yet. But if you insist, I’ll keep the camera on stand by this time
