Sorry folks, I don't mean to turn this blog into a all-pregnancy-post-all-the-time thing, but that's apparently what's happening. My brain is fried, my days are mostly the same, and the only thing I can count on for inspiration is a weekly update. I'll try to stop it! Despite the pregnancy brain kicking in, I do still have one.
So this is, supposidly, the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And it is! Truly, I'm loving the Christmas season, especially since I have a three year old who just loves nothing more than Santa and present wrapping (he's becoming quite a pro at finding a spot for them under the tree) and Christmas lights and our Ted on the Shelf and cookies and candy canes and Christmas songs, particuarly the ones with kids in them and just about everything else. It makes it so much more fun, although I am now not able to to pick up stocking items and such while he's with me. Which I guess is a fair trade off.
So it's a wonderful time to be sure. However.
It's also flu season. And look, I can deal with anything I'm thrown, but there is one sickness I am positively petrified of, try to avoid like the plague, one that makes my stomach clench if there's even a possibility of it infecting us. The puke flu.
Just saying it makes me shudder.
I don't know what my deal is, but it's maybe one of my biggest fears, to get pukey sick, and for Wyatt to get pukey sick. He had that one bout of food poisoning this summer, one that lasted about a half a day and it wasn't that bad, but the thought of the flu, the puke flu, makes me want to lock our little family up in a Lysol-rimmed, UV-wanded room, and not come out 'till spring. I know we're bound to get it sometime, if not this year but the next, and I know once he starts preschool he'll be a ticking time bomb, but I just can't get over this irrational fear.
Last year (I think it was last year?) my dad's extended family passed around this horrid flu, one we all dubbed The Moss Plague (cause that's the family name) and at least two out of every family, and there's a good 80 of us, were sick. It went through some entire families, and in ours my dad and Caleb were hit. And while my motherly instincts kick in while Wyatt's sick, this doesn't seem to quite happen with Caleb.
Sorry, Cabe. It's just not the same.
Sure, I feel terrible he's sick, but I feel terrible from a distance. Bring him things, ask how's he's feeling, from about 5 feet away. And then I wash my hands.
That year for Christmas my mom got a UV wand (okay, it was two years ago because last year Caleb bought me one!) and I wanded the entire house at least twice a day, and more if the infected person left their quarantined room. People thought I was insane, but no one else got it so I stand by my UV wand. (So when Caleb gave me my UV wand he was laughing and it was a joke, but I was thrilled beyond belief!)
So this year, knowing The Puke is going around as it always does near the holidays, I am fighting myself. I nearly took him home this Sunday rather than sending him to nursery. But I didn't. I met our friends today at McDonald's to let the kids play while we caught up (it HAS been since Saturday!) despite the fact that the place has got to be teeming with germs. (Thank heavens for my hand sanitizer!) We are taking the kids to a movie for park group tomorrow. And visiting our local jump place the day after. We are not, despite my first instincts, holed up in the house.
I don't know quite where I'm going with this, except to say, while it IS the most wonderful time of the year, it is also my most dreaded time of year. But I'm trying to be better.
But if you're sick. Just. You know. Wave from a distance or something.