Settling In

We're getting settled in at home. The first day back saw me washing seven loads of laundry, planning a week's worth of meals, and doing a big grocery shopping trip.

 Wear sunglasses from Nanna Linda--on a walk before anybody got sick

Unfortunately, on Saturday John woke up sick and was ill all day. Then by mid-day Mary began running a fever and developed croup--what I now see in retrospect was a separate illness. The last few days have been spent juggling kids sick in different ways at different times (and Mommy sick for a day too). They'd have stretches of feeling basically decent and I wanted to save the hours of TV for when they felt miserable, so we've done some play dough and painting crafts as well as card games and lots of reading. We made peanut butter balls and I bought many pounds of strawberries (on sale for $1.50/lb this week!) to make freezer jam with the kids when they're having a few hours of feeling decent.

It has been difficult to switch the children's inner time clocks. They had been shifted six hours ahead: a combination of three hours' time difference on the West Coast plus staying up till 10:00 p.m. nightly because of all our social activities. Back on the East Coast, their little clocks were set to stay up till about 1:00 a.m.! But then they all got sick and would take great long naps in the day, and I wasn't about to set an alarm to wake up a feverish, coughing child in the morning, so the sleep problems have been slow to adjust.

Playing outside while sick Mary napped indoors

Today John awoke feverish as Mary seems maybe to be on the mend, so my Mommy mind instantly calculated, 'oh, another three days at least of staying home and cancelling activities!' I feel like everything mothers do is written on the calendar in pencil. On the bright side, I am eternally grateful that I have the easy ability to stay home with my sick kids and I don't have to do something like cancel work to do it.

Last weekend we missed Mass, including a special Solemn Latin Mass given in thanksgiving as a priest's first Mass. I hope we don't all have to miss this weekend's special events leading to the Feast of Corpus Christi: a special Mass on Friday, three hours of Confession times, 40 hours of Eucharistic adoration around the clock, a parish picnic, and all concluding with the Mass celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi and a procession through the neighborhood.