Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

So–Friday. There was totally going to be a book review, except that I spent all morning puttering (usefully) and helping my oldest and my hubby get out the door to drive to Vegas for a Brad Paisley concert (picking up a friend in Kanosh on the way), and then it was early day and my son forgot there was ultimate frisbee after school and then wanted me to drive him there. I did that and then walked to pick up my youngest, but my son got home early and was feeling sick. I had to leave him to pick up my 15-year-old from school, and when I came back he’d thrown up but thought he was feeling a bit better. (Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.) I decided to cancel piano–yeah, I could have taken just his sister, but I really wasn’t feeling it, and our piano teacher is elderly with occasional health struggles–and he’d thrown up again by the time I left for Costco (we were almost out of milk). I was on the way home when he called me on his sister’s phone, miserable–he was still throwing up, and when I got home it was obvious that he felt wretched. On and on the wretched retching went–always contained, thankfully–while I did copious amounts of laundry from earlier in the week and didn’t get to bed until almost 1. At 3-ish the diarrhea started, and then he came in to snuggle at bit at 5-ish, and I hadn’t actually fallen back asleep by the time my hubby and my oldest got home at 6. (Yes, 6 in the morning. It was a quick trip.) I wasn’t going to disturb my finally-sleeping son, so I gave up my spot in the bed for my exhausted hubby and tried the couch…only I couldn’t manage to actually fall back asleep, and eventually my youngest woke up sometime after 7.

Saturday the travelers slept until noon and my poor boy’s system just kept trying to purge itself. I did chores and my oldest worked while my hubby took our youngest to see her friend in the Nutcracker, and then he and I got to bed earlier than usual (hallelujah!). Sunday we had a special stake conference with Elder Quentin L. Cook and Sister Camille N. Johnson, which we all made it to except my son, who still wasn’t feeling great. My oldest worked again and the rest of us were having a chill afternoon until my youngest started in with the retching. Have I mentioned the noise? The worst noises of the kind my children have EVER made, and they just went on, and on, and on. I let her watch whatever she wanted while the rest of us enjoyed the First Presidency Christmas Devotional–anything to distract her from the awfulness–but when the diarrhea set in for her, I knew it was going to be an awfully long night. Maxi pads were put to a use for which they were certainly never intended, and there were smells and more retching and changes of certain articles of clothing pretty much all night long. I spent the night on Clifford–our big red couch–but couldn’t fall asleep until after “Inside Out” was over with, and even then it was hard to tell what level of sleep actually happened. (Certainly NOT an impressive one.) She has yet to keep anything down today except for tiny sips of water-when she drinks more she just throws it up, as she did the one saltine she tried–and we let my son go to band this morning only because his concert is next week. My hubby picked him up and brought him home before he left for work, because I didn’t want to leave my youngest and I most certainly wasn’t letting her get more than 20 feet from a bathroom. It’s true he can now keep food down, but all he wanted was a piece of bread this morning, and I sure as heck wasn’t letting him stay for the whole school day on that. (Or eat school lunch, which he didn’t want anyway.) I did enough cleaning and organizing to make a solid difference today, but I’m certainly not bursting with energy (although tomorrow will probably be worse).

On the other hand, last night I did manage to finish listening to Renee Watson’s (pretend the appropriate accent is over that middle ‘e’) Ways to Make Sunshine, which is on the Battle of the Books list for my daughter’s elementary school this year. It’s shorter and easier than the sort of middle grade to which I normally gravitate, but the review that mentions it as Watson’s version of Ramona Quimby feels spot on. Ryan Hart’s family is moving to a smaller house, and that brings the sort of up-and-down changes that bring tribulation to a fourth grader’s soul. She figures out how to deal with them, however, and I’m expecting my own fourth grader to enjoy and relate to this slice-of-life offering for her age group. (Just as soon as she manages to both be awake and alert AND keep food and drink inside of her where it belongs.) It’ll be easy reading for her, true, but that will make it accessible to a wider variety of fourth graders. If you’re looking for a lovely piece of realistic fiction for that age group to go under your Christmas tree, this one is a solid choice.