Dog Days Of Summer

Less than a week to go before school starts. Where has the time gone?

Summer has been filled with camping trips to the lake, long nights laughing with friends, lazy mornings sleeping till 9am, swim camps, bike riding, rock collecting, horse stables, ice cream, s’mores, fireworks and BBQ’s.

So why not end the dog days of summer housebound with a stomach bug.

Good times.

Oh, it’s as much fun as it sounds having a sick barfy kid every second day for the past 10 days. It’s like, just when you think it’s all gone and you can do laundry and breathe a sigh of relief, you hear that tell tale moan from deep in your sweet dream land (at 2am because it’s always 2am), “mooooooommmmmmm!”.

 

 

It’s been a special kind of hell around here but thru it all I’ve had this insane feeling of love running thru me. As weird as it sounds, my kids get some of the best of me when they’re sick. They get baby’d and cared for 1-on-1 and they get to be priority over everyone and everything else. And I’m guessing that in a family of 4 kids, that can feel pretty darn good. Don’t get me wrong, I do my very best to give each of my kids 1-on-1 time and make them feel like they are my priority as much as I can but when this family machine is running at full speed, there are moments that are rushed and tasked that get multi’d. They have to do their best to keep up with the spinning wheels.

C’mon, I’m only 1 woman.

So when one (or in the case this week, several) of my littles needs to be nursed back to health, I use my soft voice and I cater to their smallest of requests and I bring them crustless toast with their favourite clear fluid and in return I feel all the love back.

When Abby was sick, all she wanted was for me to sit with her and watch her favourite shows. Lucky for me it was Smurfs.

When Hilary was sick, all she wanted was to be alone in her room (can you blame her, she has 3 sisters including a twin) with unlimited access to the new Littlest Pet Shoppe series.

 

 

And when Brigette was sick, she wanted to watch all things adventure! Being stuck in the house on a beautiful late August day when you could hear kids outside having fun is brutally unfair and so we decided to sit down and have an adventure thru a movie. We put on National Treasure on Netflix and sipped apple juice together on the couch. She laughed at the jokes and sat up with excitement when the chase scenes came on and by the end she was all smiles.

So much for the dog days of summer around here but at least we can add, 1-on-1 time to our list of loved memories this summer holiday.