A Week, Briefly (Mar 14, 2022)

 

Photo credit: Nature Angel

Proof that spring is really here!  We've had a number of false starts, and, according to our planting zone, we are subject to freezes until April 15, but I think we've turned the corner!

Spring notwithstanding, we spent a lot of time indoors dealing with vomit.

Lots and lots and lots of vomit.

Every kid 18-and-under at my house (that's 9) got sick with a stomach bug.  In addition, several of our babies got sick, too.

And we had extra babies on more days than usual because Little Mister Frog and Nugget's house had a terrible kitchen fire that rendered the entire house uninhabitable.  They came to spend time with us so that Mom could deal with insurance and finding a new place to live and buying new beds and things like that.

Between extra babies and a stomach bug, it wasn't a very academic week in our homeschool.

But Lola did finish this book!

Between ADHD and a broken arm, it has taken Lola over a year to finish part 1 of her grade 1 math.  We're both hoping that part 2 will only take a few months.

Following are some of our sweeter pre-sickness moments.

Costume play!

One day was warm enough for naked babies and water play.

The Duke and Li'l K found a happy hideaway under the piano and communed as toddlers do.

Circle time is one of the sweetest times of the day.  Here Nature Angel cut out paper pieces of pie for the kids to color while she read them a story about making and sharing pie with others.

Brother was the last to get sick, so while he felt good, he helped The Duke play outside and volunteered to do lots of extra chores for the sick people.  He was terribly sweet.

Nature Angel is crocheting a patchwork sweater and continuing to sketch every day.  The sweater is not ready to be shown, but here is another of her sketches.

And then there are the sick days:

Just a few hours after this, Mister Man was hit with the worst vomiting of the whole family, but until then, he read stories to his baby brother who was the first to feel dreadful.

Angelic baby boy!!

On Friday we thought we were feeling better, so we had breakfast and Morning Meeting, but heads drooped one after the other to the table, and I knew we were in for another day of convalescing.

We watched several episodes of Animals on Netflix . . . or watched and dozed, as the case may be.

As kids started feeling better, there were some card games and puzzles in progress in the afternoons.

Dad brought home a new batch of library books.  Baymax latched onto Buffalo Bill by the D'aulaires.

Mister Man kind of played cards and mostly read Encyclopedia Brown books simultaneously.

We counted our blessings that our number of babies dropped to a manageable number while the sickness was at its worst.  Some of them were sick, so they stayed home with their parents, and some of them fortuitously had other reasons for getting to stay away from our house.  We love, love our babies, but taking care of them would really have been too much to manage when bodies were wracked with nausea.

We started and got about 100 pages into Farmer Boy.  The kids are entranced, and I'm wondering if Mrs. Wilder really cooked that much each day!  It's boggling to read it again as a mother and think about what she had to do to keep her family fed and clothed.

We made a little bit of progress through Bullfinch's Greek and Roman Mythology.  I think we'll wrap up what I plan to read from it in the next couple of days.

Ladybug and Lola are officially moved into their new bedroom, equipped with a camera and door alarm.  I have an app on my phone that gives me live video/audio feed while they're in their room, and it rings an alarm when any motion is detected.  It's perfect!  They know the camera (they call it The Demon Camera because it has a red light above the camera "eye") is looking at them, so they're staying in their own beds, and because I've been alerted to any suspicious talking or moving, I've been able to show up in their room and remind them that I'm aware of everything. :)

Sickness kept us from Wednesday night church activities and forced us to miss a dance performance.  There are 24 kids in the group this year, and my kids are 8 of that number.  They went ahead and did their best with the remaining 16!  Kudos to our friends for making sure that the show went on!!

Lola, Baymax, and Mister Man are still struggling with GI symptoms even 5 days after the stomach bug began.  I hope they will return to full health soon.  

We're supposed to have rain for almost a week ahead, but we also have 2 shows scheduled this week.  We are more than just a little bit nervous about handling shows with lots of babies--the shows are earlier than our rehearsals, so we won't have Belle's help.  😳