...on life...

Stacy chose a cooking magazine at the store last weekend--mini chef!

 
I am sitting here in at my kitchen table next to a sick little girl.  She is in her pajamas, I am wearing dirty yoga pants and the hoodie I wore to work yesterday, nursing my second cup of coffee.  My first sick day as a working mama again.  Well, except for the half day I took last month to attend a 5 minute follow-up doctor appointment, after a month of physical therapy for my hand because I fell in a creek at the end of the summer.  It's a long story.  Another time maybe...back to today.  It seems my weekly post here has degenerated into a string of "it's been a busy week for us" and I look back with wonder at the posts from a few years ago when I felt like I had so much to share and to document.  So much I didn't want to forget about our daily living.  Sometimes I forget that these days, though busy in a different way, are precious too.

Kelsey's flowchart for summer fun...

It has been *another* busy week.  A week made hectic by sick kids and mom and dad alternating taking days off to stay home with them.  A week that feels 100 years long when you're up with a vomiting child one night and two days later with the news that your other kiddo is suffering from a virus that is very painful and for which the doctors can offer little relief.  Sick days are different with bigger kids.  When they were younger, distraction from their discomfort was easier.  Novel toys, a bit more TV, a bath in the middle of the day...all of those things were effective in redirecting their attention from feeling crummy.  Big kids play with toys less, have decided they don't really like watching TV (one of my kids...just like her mama!), and are decidedly too big for baths.  Or so they think.  Until bedtime, when they break your heart with whimpering in their half sleep.  It feels like we often have one foot in the land of littles and one in the land of bigs.  Always growing.

But they are good, these days.  Big kids say great things like, "What can I do to help?" and "I already did it for you, Mom!".  Big kids know that their sibling needs some extra love and attention and step gracefully aside to allow it to happen.  They bring home news and homework from school for their ill sibling, peppering the whole family with stories of funny moments from the day.  They make you smile...just when you need it most. Then there are husbands.  Husbands who have hot food waiting for you when you come home for lunch, who take sick kids to the doctor, do the laundry, offer a sane point of view when you're on the verge of tears with sympathy for your kids, and who ask what you want for Christmas and then show up with the gift that same day because they want you to have what you want.  Yes...there is surely goodness in these days.

We went for a snowy walk last night.  It has been bitterly cold here for the past week and the wind has howled incessantly.  It finally stopped on Wednesday night, allowing the clouds to roll in and blanket us in a few inches of snow.  It's so pretty!

This weekend the girls have a church Thanksgiving performance followed by our first Thanksgiving meal of the week.  I'm hopeful that they'll both get to participate, but at this rate goodness only knows.  We'll keep on taking it one day at a time, making the decisions we need to make and finding the good in between the tough.  That's becoming our specialty...finding silver linings!