First swing of spring. Thomas bike helmet and all…

Six weeks. We have been sick for six weeks. Back at the end of January it was Emma who struggled with a cold and fluid filled ears. Then Will caught the cold which garnered him a double ear infection. Both went on antibiotics and I breathed a sigh of relief that life would soon be back to normal.

Then we had back to back blizzards. Nothing to do with being sick I know, but still, 10 days of fun but wacky and housebound schedules. Once we dug out it seemed pretty clear that Will hadn’t quite kicked the ear infections, so off to the doctor we went again and brought home a second round of antibiotics.

Then we all got a stomach virus. Emma and I were laid up with it first and Mike followed closely behind. Will was the only one spared, but less than a week later he developed a fever completely out of the blue. Then Mike developed a fever and flu-like symptoms and was flat on his back for three days.

The fever stuck with Will for a few days before the cough and runny nose hit. The lingering fever and hacking cough took us back to the doctor for the third time in a month where we found that Will’s lungs were clear, but his ears were still not. The ears, coupled with how long the fever was lasting, prompted the doctor to give us yet another antibiotic, stronger and longer this time.

Then the annoying cough turned into difficulty breathing and asthma-like symptoms for Will. The doctor put him on oral albuterol to open his lungs. Now, four days later, Will is still coughing and still has a fever, and, of course, now Emma has started coughing.

So off the doctor we went again this morning to figure out why Will has had a fever going on 12 days and still can’t seem to breathe. The doctor gave him a nebulizer treatment in the office to get his breathing back to normal and sent us home with our very own, brand new nebulizer with a fishy face on the mask, hoping that the fever will clear up in the next few days if his lungs will “calm down”. Needless to say, Will was not happy about the nebulizer, but the doctor said Emma’s lungs are clear. At least there’s that.

So the saga continues, but we are all exhausted. Illness brings with it not only discomfort, but crankiness, poor(er) sleeping, the inability to get out of the house, the cancellation of normal activities, and general chaos. Did I mention the inability to get out of the house? It was so much easier to be sick as a single person, or even a childfree married couple. You just turn on the tv for a week, eat saltines at every meal and get better. This “family” illness thing is much much more complicated and exhausting, not to mention there are more of us to share the diseases.

And the irony is that as much as I want things to get back to normal and to be able to leave the house, is it not the leaving of the house that is the problem? The only week this month when none of us were sick was the week we were housebound as a result of the blizzards. If we were total hermits it would be a little tough to pick up the germs in the first place.

I will be glad when winter is over.

Mike’s grandmother, Emma and Will’s great-grandmother, Hester, passed away last Sunday. It was her 97th birthday.

Hester was quiet, but had a gentle strength. She cried the first time she met Emma and watched Will with intently when she met him last October. Emma was fascinated with the softness of Nana’s skin and loved the candy Nana gave her when we went to visit.

We didn’t get to see Nana nearly as much as we would have liked, since she was in Massachusetts and we are here in Maryland, but I love that I got a chance to know her at all. I am also happy that her great-grandchildren got a chance to meet her. She will be missed.

William turns 11 months old today.

Unfortunately, his “monthly” updates seem to be as sporadic as his ability to sleep through the night. I try to keep up with them, but something about having two (just one thing Jen?) prevents me from doing them as regularly as I would like. Will, when you are reading this in years to come, please know that my lack of posting is a reflection only on my inability to stay awake past 9:00 PM these days and is no reflection on your awesomeness in any way.

Things have been moving pretty fast in Will’s world in the last month or so. His sleep is still pretty much a disaster. He sleeps through the night every once in a while, but mostly is up repeatedly. In the last week or two he has only been getting up once a night, which has been a cause for celebration (if you don’t count waking up at 5:00 AM as a night wakening. Which, really, I do.)

His sleep is something we have worked hard at fixing but have finally realized that in the end he will sleep when he will sleep. He knows how to sleep, he can go down “drowsy but awake” (curse you sleep experts) and really doesn’t rely on any sleep crutches. He just happens to like a little midnight snack. I will be very very happy when he does finally sleep through the night, because clearly being sleep deprived for almost A YEAR is not one of the “pros” of parenting.

He started eating baby food at around six months, but we quickly realized that he has a super crazy gag reflex and could not tolerate any texture in anything. If he got so much as a half a grain of rice in his food he would look at us in dismay, his face would turn bright red and he would gag repeatedly until he threw up the offending interloper in his erstwhile smooth dinner. This was especially annoying when it happened at the end of a meal.

I was beginning to worry a little that he might still be eating baby food when he was five, but about two weeks ago he started eating Mum-Mums a wonderful little rice cracker that dissolves in his mouth before he can gag. He was so psyched about those that he moved on almost immediately to Cheerios, with great success. Yesterday he ate an entire meal with his fingers - mac and cheese, carrots and string cheese. It took me longer to cut it all up than it took him to eat it, but we were both thrilled. We are going to give him some steak next week and see how he does.

Back on January 4, he stood by himself for the first time, but I couldn’t get him to do it again for weeks. Recently, he got back to it and is now adept at getting himself into a standing position without holding onto anything and getting himself back down to the floor when he realizes he wants to go somewhere. Could walking be far away?

Similarly, he started rocking on his hands and knees months ago, but never could get any forward movement (although he was like lightening going backwards.) Two weeks ago, finally, he started moving forward. Within a matter of days he could move faster than I could and now I have to move with the speed of Lindsey Vonn to get things out of his way.

He adores his big sister Emma, despite her recent penchant for lying on top of him until he is rescued and she is sent to time out. He also loves the dogs, who he calls “duh duh”, and the cats, who he takes huge handfuls of, when they will let him. He has the most lovely smile and is a huge flirt, something that just gets funnier and cuter as he gets older and more aware of what he is doing.

Emma said to me yesterday “Mama, I love William.” Ditto.

After Snowpocalypse/Snowmageddon 2010 we built a snow slide out of the mound of snow created by shoveling the driveway.

Emma was a fan.

Emma and Will playing together. It was sheer luck that I turned around at the very moment they were playing and even better luck that the Flip camera was within arm’s reach.

I am hoping that moments like this will outweigh moments like the one tonight where Emma sat on her brother and earned a time out in the process. Didn’t get that one on video. Sorry.

I thought I liked it. I thought it was fun and relaxing and a great way to keep the kids occupied for a half an hour or so, while getting them clean at the same time - what a bargain!

Nope. Bath time at my house has turned into my worst nightmare. The ten month-old flaps his arms in joy as he lunges and lurches and nearly drowns every ten seconds or so. And the three year-old, oh the three year-old…she has discovered that bath time is the perfect opportunity to really REALLY push my buttons, and that I am mostly powerless to stop her.

The game starts when she first steps into the tub and refuses to sit down. She lingers, standing in the tub, pretending she can’t hear my requests to “sit flat”. Finally, when I up the ante and it becomes “sit flat or you are getting out” she sits.

Then the splashing begins. It starts out pretty sweet really, just little splashes, the kind you might watch with joy as you think about how fun bath time is for the pre-school crowd. But soon the tiny flicks of water turn into bigger splashes, whole hand splashes, and they start to find their way OUT of the tub.

That is when I realize I have already lost. I try desperately to regain control of the bath, threatening and cajoling her - as I clutch my youngest by his upper arm to keep him from going under. But my three year-old just looks at me with a glint in her eye, she is having too too much fun now, and there is no going back.

Soon she is doing full body seated leaps - throwing her entire self into the air from a sitting position and landing in the water with as much force as she can muster, sending water everywhere and drenching me and the bathroom in the process. At this point I am usually completely hysterical as I systematically remove all privileges and finally threaten that she will not be allowed to attend the senior prom if she doesn’t KNOCK IT OFF RIGHT NOW.

Usually it is around this time that the boy looks at me, then at his sister, and with a huge grin on his face, begins to copy her. And that is when, depending on the day, I either surrender and pull the shower curtain closed to preserve the patch of dry still on my clothing, letting them splash to their hearts content, or I put an end to my torture and pull them both out of the bath.

Next time, showers for us all.

Tonight, watching the Hope for Haiti Now fundraiser the reason became clear. It’s my kids. As I watched the images from Haiti and heard the stories of loss and families torn apart I realized that I have been avoiding it because I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand the knowledge of the children who have lost their parents, of the parents who have lost their children. I can’t stand the hundreds and thousands of people coping with grief, loss, hunger, fear, pain, and death. I can’t stand the thought of my own family having to face these challenges or of my children finding themselves suddenly scared and alone in the world. It’s incredibly selfish of me, but that is the truth.

Watching the coverage left me sobbing with grief - for the people of Haiti, for its children and for its future. It also left me feeling guilty that I have avoided it until now. If the people of Haiti can stand what is happening to them and can find hope in the rubble, how dare I say I can’t stand simply watching it.

We have contributed to the relief of Haiti. Now I want to wrap my arms around everyone there, especially the children, and hold them and tell them everything is going to be alright. Since I can’t do that I want to call someone and tell them that we can take in some of the children they might be sending to the US soon. Since I can’t do that, I am going to go hug my kids.

In the last week William has started crawling - not just rocking back and forth anymore but full on forward motion - and cruising. He loves our coffee table because it is big and he can cruise around and around it, knocking off everything he finds. Like puzzles. Oh, and remotes. But he doesn’t so much knock those off as eat them and that is another video entirely.