Thanksgiving

Abraham and Ezekiel have been taking turns being sick for the last week or so. I blame storytime at the library and all those germy kids with all their grubby little hands. The good thing about going through this sickness experience (and being sure that it's from storytime) is that it's making me reconsider my not-so-secret longings to put our kids in all kinds of fun and expensive activities like Kindermusik and ballet and gymnastics. The bad thing about going through this sickness experience is when it all hits at once. So far we had escaped that but last night it all wound up and exploded in my face.

It is SO hard when one of my little ones is sick. I just want to hold them forever and make it all better. That's what I would do when Rilla was a baby... hold her and hold her and nurse her forever. And that's still what I want to do, just love on them and cuddle them and read to them and comfort them. But it's crazy hard when they are too big to hold more than one at once anymore but still little enough to be really, really needy.

So last night found Keith away... he began a new on-call specialized delivery driver kind of job yesterday, and his first assignment was delivering breast milk from the Spokane airport to a NICU in Richland, which I only mention because it made it all *slightly* better that he wasn't home when I pictured him helping some little baby in the NICU... and me home with the little ones. And so Ezekiel was highly feverish and just needed his mama to hold him and nurse him constantly... and to his credit, he was really sweet and content if only I could make that happen. But I couldn't make it happen, because Abraham was at the same time absolutely freaking out. He had thrown up at the dinner table the previous two nights, and I'd thought we'd escaped it last night, but he woke up at 10 pm or so and was just livid. He was so scared of puking and felt so wretched inside that he was furious and it was all just really, really crazy. Have you ever tried to quietly nurse and comfort a poor, sick, feverish baby while at the same time rock and sing to and soothe an explosively sick and scared and angry two-year-old? It's quite the fantastic experience, let me tell you. By which I mean impossible. After at least an hour of trying to comfort both, I finally had to leave Abraham and let him be livid while I nursed Ezekiel to sleep, and then I could finally come back to adequately comfort Abraham. It was ridiculously hard on all of us, though.

There have definitely been moments or minutes in having three children when I have been saddened and regretful that I could only hold one or two of them at a time. But usually if one can just wait for three or four minutes, I can get the other upset child calmed down, and even though it breaks my heart to have to make one wait, I am pretty sure it is good for each of them in the long run not to be so much the center of my attention as I'd like each one to be. But I hadn't experienced before... or maybe I'm just not remembering it at the moment... having this kind of upsetness continuing for so long. I think the whole ordeal was a few hours long. I don't think there is anything more exhausting than trying to be a good mama to ultra-needy sick children!

So I won't drag out the explanation anymore but it was nuts. And we'd planned to go to a big family Thanksgiving get-together today but we didn't. Which was okay. It took most of the day to work up the energy to get dressed, so not driving a long ways was just fine with all of us... except sweet Rilla, who had so been looking forward to Thanksgiving with the family. She's alright but I hope we can make it up to her. My sweet, patient girl!

So anyway, we had Thanksgiving here today, and it was restful and just fine. My dad is here too and we managed to cook a huge turkey with tasty stuffing and make nice mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce from scratch. And we'd bought a pumpkin-like squash to make pumpkin pie but Josie and Reuben dropped some over for us instead and so we were all set, which was good because we never would have gotten around to the pies; it took us until like 5:30 to get all the other stuff ready. And I realized at the end of the day that this is the first time in eight and a half years of marriage that we've been home for Thanksgiving. So that was rather nice, in the end, because our fridge has that post-Thanksgiving, jam-packed-full-of-tasty-stuff look that we've never quite had before. And I am really excited about leftovers.

That's all, nothing profound. Just Thanksgiving day at home. But I'm really really thankful. You know why? Every reason there is, but oddly enough I am just really, really, really deeply thankful to have electricity and indoor plumbing. If you've never done without, I don't know if you can really know how awesome it is to have it, but... did I mention Abraham puked all over all of our sheets last night? Yeah, super gross. But indoor plumbing? Electricity? All clean again. We even have showers and a dishwasher and lights and internet. Seriously, even being sick in this country is easy. I can't imagine how horrid it would be to be a mama in a third-world country and try to comfort children through stuff like this AND not have a way to get all the other stuff done. At least here we can just sort of move on with things and even have a feast today. I know I'm rambling here but I am really thankful for the blessing of being able to take care of my children in such wonderful ease and convenience. We are really, really blessed.