oh, if you only knew

last week was terrible. i mean really awful. i almost hated motherhood all last week.

it started off with disease. it seems like this year has been fraught with all manner of sickness but this last week really took the cake. there were deep chest coughs and copious amounts of mucus that caught on to ava's hair and glued it in place on her cheek, there was puke (oh the puke) and moaning, sleeplessness in the night and sleepiness in the day. . .

it was impressive, really. i mean, how did they do that? how did they get that sick at the same time???

wednesday we went to the doctor. guess what? rsv. remember him? ava had him last year. i don't remember it being as bad, though. maybe when you throw another child into the mix it gets phenomenally worse. so, seth couldn't breathe and ava was impossible and every four hours i had to pin seth down (or, rather up) so i could force him to inhale an asthma treatment for what felt like twelve hours. it was especially tricky because he had to be upright and not down. how do you pin a child who cannot walk? i'll tell you: i'm not sure. all i know is that we wiggled a good amount during treatment time. and at the end of it, i was never really certain anything had been properly inhaled.

it's nearly over now, people are acting happier, breathing more clearly and i dislike them a lot less that i did last week. thank goodness. it got pretty bad. one night ryan came home and i had claw marks all over my face from giving seth a treatment and i said, "it's a good thing you came home when you did because i almost dropped our children off at the police station today." he thought that was funny until he saw i wasn't laughing. i can laugh about it now, and i think i will as long as no one gets sick anytime soon. this is probably going to turn into one of those mothering experiences that is so awful but i can't remember that fact six months from now (like childbirth).

you know who's really good at that? my mother in law. she had four kids all within six years of eachother and the two middle children are fourteen months apart. i would have barely lived to tell the tale, but to hear kristine tell it you would have thought she was mothering little stuffed animals rather than humans. stuffed animals are silent and hold still and i have yet to meet a child who does that. hands down, stuffed animals make easier offspring than humans. but on the other hand, who ever told a cute story about a stuffed animal?

example:

ava comes to me with a piece of dried mucus on her extended finger. "This my booger, mom." she says.
"yes," I agree, "why don't you throw that away?"
happily she obliges and goes off to play. moments later she approaches me again. this time she says, "i want my booger back."

i dare you to come up with a story about a stuffed animal that rivals this one.

i guess another option is that kristine just had really well behaved children, but after hearing about michael leaving her so frustrated she actually started tying him to a chair (the story goes that michael was so interested in being tied up that he held very still which made kristine realize that she was actually tying her child to a chair. then she laughed hard. very hard. and michael got away), i think that perhaps kristine just had normal children that sort of get everywhere and are loud.

that week was so hard that i forgot that i actually enjoy my children. saturday things really looked good when for the most part of the day seth was his normal cheerful self. i couldn't stop marveling at his ability to be amused, the fact that he smiled often.

"he's always like this." ryan said, baffled at my joy over seth's laughing. oh yeah. i'd forgotten that he's actually a mostly pleasant child.

so here we are, nearly inflammation free and ready to mingle with the general public. i'm thrilled about the prospect of leaving my house without the risk of someone losing their lunch. so if you're out today and you see the woman and the two small children with smiles so wide their faces are about to split open, that'd be us. go ahead and say hello.

we hope to see you out there, too.