Sick, sick, sick!

Sorry we've been absent for a while. The last few weeks have been a little crazy and somewhat draining. It seems like Abigail has been sick with one thing or another for the past three weeks. (But as you can tell from the picture, she's been her happy, rambunctious First she had roseola, which was a little scary for me until Erik diagnosed it and told me about the symptoms. Then all last week and into this week she's had a really bad cold which we thought might be RSV, and this week she's also had diarrhea and a really bad rash. I haven't been able to keep up with all her dirty diapers; sometimes she tells me she's poopy, and other times she just goes about as usual with her cheerful play and chatter and I don't find out till much later that she's been sitting in it for hours. So the rash hasn't healed much the last few days, and it has been making her very uncomfortable at night. The last few nights she's woken up around the clock, and Erik and/or I have gone in to change her and reapply the rash cream (yes, sometimes it takes both of us to do that because she kicks and screams in pain--I would too). Not very fun or easy to do at 2 o-clock in the morning when I can hardly get my eyes to open all the way.

So.....Abigail's had a tough time lately. And usually that means I have a tough time too. She generously shared her cold with me (actually, it's probably my own fault since I'm rather reckless about sharing drinking glasses and giving her bites of my breakfast), so we've been draining our Kleenex supply the last few weeks and trying not to sneeze on Erik.

Despite all that, we've all been in very high spirits (during the day, at least!). Erik has started a new rotation - emergency medicine - and is enjoying the fact that most of his assigned shifts don't start until 3 pm! We're still getting used to the luxury of having him around in the morning! He loves being able to spend time with us when he's awake and energetic, which he hasn't been able to do the last month when he's gotten home just before or after Abby's bedtime. Abigail is thrilled and doesn't like to let him out of her sight.

On the first morning of this delightful new schedule (Tuesday), I was feeling like a particularly happy wife, being able to enjoy a sit-down breakfast with my husband, so I decided to make a scrumptious scrambled egg breakfast. A while later, we all piled happily into the car to drive to a nearby park to exercise. Unfortunately, our car battery was dead. Undeterred, Erik went and got the jumper cables and brought the other car over to jump us. I tried to keep Abigail entertained the whole time by singing her favorite songs, but right in the middle of the chorus to "The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock" (right about the time I was singing "and the floods came up!"), she suddenly erupted, covering herself and her carseat in scrambled eggs. I'll leave the details of the smell to your imagination....but it wasn't pleasant. However, nothing seemed to phase Erik that morning. He just kept smiling as he helped me get Abigail out of the car. Then while I took her inside, changed her clothes, and fed her some lunch, that Super-husband of mine took care of ALL the smelly details. He cleaned up the mess in the car, brought her carseat in, scrubbed every inch of it in the bathtub, and put all her clothes in the wash. I hardly touched a thing. Then he took our car over to the Saturn place to have it checked out (the battery had been dying on me pretty frequently). What a man! I felt almost guilty letting him do everything; I was expecting to clean things up during Abigail's nap. He did it all himself, though, and I was so grateful that I told him I'd do almost anything for him. His response: "Would that include making me a tuna fish sanchwich?" (I absolutely detest the taste and especially the smell of tuna fish. Erik loves it, though, and always gives me a hard time about never letting him eat it. I have to remind him that I don't mind in the least his eating the stuff, but if he wants it, he gets to prepare it himself.) It was a true test of my love, but I passed. I made him a yucky tuna fish sandwhich.

THEN after all that, he went to work for 9 hours! What a tropper!