Tuesday Tips #2 – Plague (Stomach Flu)

So as you may have noticed I did not post a Monday Musing yesterday. This is because the plague (stomach flu) hit my house. I’m not feeling like organizing my post into tips right now, so you’ll just have to infer your own tips out of my post. Also no particularly philosophical thoughts. Just a recounting of the past two days to get y’all up to date.

Nocturnal Stomach Flu

Around 2am I woke to one of my kids crying. And then barfing. Ugh.

There is really not much worse than puke in the middle of the night. Especially older daughter who just stood in the middle of her bedroom, not even attempting to make it to her toilet. At least it wasn’t in her bed, I guess, if I am trying to look for a bright side to all of this.

To make things even more joyful, I turned around and little sister is standing in her pack n play watching me in the hallway. it startled me a little because she didn’t make any noise.

I got older sister out of her room, because, the smell! I checked her over, seemingly no puke on her and got her laid down on a spare toddler bed mattress in little sister’s room. I dragged little sister’s pack n play to my room and got her laid back down.

Now normally I am not a sympathy puker (like my mother), so I went back to try to at least clean up a little bit, but, again, the smell! I barely made it back to my bathroom. Screw it. I went back to bed.

Monday Morning Screen Time Snafu

The next morning, I still wasn’t feeling great, but older sister seemed fine. Since it was spring break, 3 big ones were home with me this morning and little one was scheduled for daycare. I didn’t feel up to driving so I called my mom. She dispatched my younger sister who was home from college for a few days. So a huge thanks to my sister for taking a resistant toddler to daycare for me.

Older son was still asleep, which was pretty unusual for him, so I was hoping he was just sleeping off his bug. I still wasn’t feeling good, so I went back to bed while older sister and younger brother somehow entertained each other all morning. I got up around lunchtime and saw older brother was still asleep! He is my early bird so I went in to check to make sure he was still breathing and hadn’t, I don’t know, choked on his own vomit or something.

That’s when I saw it. His kindle on the bed next to him. That is strange. The kids kindles are only awake for a short period of time each day, why would… I woke it up to check the awake times. He had changed the times!! I don’t know how long he played on his kindle, but it must had been half the night for him to have slept 5 hours later than usual. Apparently he had overseen my type in the pin code sometime the day before and decided to get enterprising.

His reasoning later after he had woken up? Well, mom, I missed kindle time twice this week. So that means stay up all night playing?

“How do I explain that life does not revolve around screen time?” says every parent ever these days.

Afternoon in Bed

My nanny came in at 1:30, but I think the kids ended up watching movies all afternoon, so I’m not sure what the point was. She did go pick up the baby from daycare. The report from school was that baby was tired and just wanted to snuggle all day. Which probably meant she was starting to feel bad too.

I did throw up again about 3pm and started feeling a tiny bit better, but still pretty spent the afternoon in bed. My lovely lovely cleaning lady came by late afternoon and finished cleaning up and disinfecting daughter’s room.

I only really started feeling better around 8pm. One of my sweet sweet friends delivered ginger ale and saltines to my front porch around then. It has been a long long time since I had any soda, so I savored my ginger ale that my stomach was finally ready to accept.

Tuesday Morning

I could tell when we got up, that baby wasn’t going to school. She didn’t want any breakfast and just wanted to lay on me. So I kept her home and we slept most of the morning. I was still pretty tired from my stomach flu induced fast the previous day.

I needed to go by the credit union to get cash for our trip later this week, when I discovered I couldn’t find my driver’s license. Luckily I checked before we left and didn’t discover this in the drive thru at the CU. I decided to just go get a new one since I hadn’t updated my address anyway.

Errands and Chores

So we went by Raisin Cane’s drive thru so they kids could eat while I was in the tag agency. The tag agency was not busy and I got in and out. Got my cash at the credit union and headed home. Baby fell asleep in the car, so I laid her down for a nap. I worked on going through my mail and some other miscellaneous paperwork until she work up.

I convinced all the kids to play in the front yard while I worked on breaking down boxes in the garage. Since it got cold, I have gotten lazy and just throw my amazon boxes in the garage rather than breaking them down to fit in the recycling cart.

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Evening

I decided to take the kids to MacAlister’s deli for dinner. I love their $1 kids meals. All 5 of us ate for under $14. I think we were close to $30 the last time we went to Chick-fil-a. I was going to take the kids to Target to shop for snacks for our trip, but I could tell that was going to be a fiasco.

Older son was skeptical but I whipped out the Shipt app on my phone and a few minutes later we had our breakfast and snacks ordered to be delivered between 8 and 9. Seriously in love with Shipt. Try it if you haven’t!

It was a good thing I did, because younger son was asleep in the van by the time we got home. Younger daughter went down right away after a diaper change and her Nighty Night oils. She goes to sleep about a thousand times quicker with those oils.

Final Note

I’m not really sure how to conclude this one. My brain is still just a bit fuzzy. So I’ll go get some more sleep and hope y’all avoid the tummy bug.