Of Ice and Phlegm

We were excited to be visited, albeit briefly, by Kira’s brother and his family midweek. I met them in Chicago near my office for lunch, and then they headed to our house to spend some time with Kira. I had a meeting and then went home to chat with them too before they had to head back to Indiana where they were staying for the night. They and we have eight kids between us, so it was loud and fun to have all of the cousins play together. Perhaps someday we will be closer together and can manage more good times like that. 

We were also visited early in the week by the sickness fairy. Kira had a rough couple of days with sore throat, chills, aches, and severe headaches, but fortunately felt much better by the time I came down with it. Merritt seems to have had it in its mildest form, but somehow has still managed to get and stay awake at night, much to our dismay. Avey and Carver have remained thus far unscathed, but we shall see what the next few days have in store for them. 

Poor Hakan may have had two things at once. After Kira had a particularly rough night with Merritt, I got up with Hakan at 4:30 a.m. to find his pillow quite wet. I thought perhaps it was just spillage from his water bottle, so I let him get up so as to avoid his waking Carver. I got him set in front of a show with some graham crackers and tried to go back to sleep for a little while. I was disrupted yet again when Hakan’s body rejected the graham crackers all over the couch (covered with a blanket for just such instances, thankfully). I got that cleaned up and then went back to sleep, thinking perhaps he had just coughed enough to have gagged it up. Hakan came in to wake me about 20 minutes later, losing his crackers all over the carpet this time. By then, it was clear that he had some real stomach issue going on. I gave up my hope for more sleep, bathed him, washed all of his sheets, scrubbed the carpet, and got myself ready to leave for work. Luckily, no one else has had stomach problems so far, and Hakan was able to keep food down by the end of the day.

On a happier note, we were also visited by winter today. It has been a bizarre season for Illinois as this is the first snow, and it’s already December 4th. The kids are beside themselves with glee. Carver and Avey dashed out to explore this morning and had to be dragged back in to get dressed for church.

I am not looking forward to the bike ride to the train station tomorrow, but I am glad that the kids have something new to do. This is all starting to get us into a Christmas mood. We’ve got the house decked out, and most of my shopping is done. Now we play the waiting game. This will be my last week of classes, and then come finals. It will be nice to have a winter break to try to catch up on some things, and most especially to visit Colorado, if only briefly.

#Happenings