Ahhhh....motherhood.

Well, it's 15 degrees here...brrrrr! But I love it! I would much rather it be cold than hot. When it's hot, you can't snuggle up next to crackling fire w/ your kiddos and stay in your jammies all day watching Noggin because school was canceled due to an inch of ice on everything. They just don't cancel school for too much hot. Unless you're in the city school district. Oh snap!

Now, when I say I love not being able to leave the house is great, it is...unless you've been stuck inside for 5 out of the last 6 days. My fears of J.J. having whooping cough were assuaged by a quick trip to the emergency care doctor last Sunday. Nope...he just had a cough due to his allergies, said Mr. Overpriced On-call Doctor. And his overly goopy-but-not-quite-pink eyes were caused by the same. So that's why we took him to school on Wednesday. Then it hit us. All of us.

The sickness. The coughing, aches, chills, headache, sore throat, sniffling, sneezing yuckiness that has been hitting EVERYONE around here. First, I called in sick to Bible study Wednesday night. I woke up with a bit of a scratchy throat that morning and unfortunately it got progressively worse as the day progressed (despite my best attempts to fix it with Jason's Deli soup and salad bar--thanks for the invite, Julie N.!). By the time 5:00 rolled around, I was shivering under a blanket on the couch with aching joints and a pounding headache. And still had 2 kids to take care of. Ahhhh....motherhood. I tried to enlist the help of both my mom who was stuck at work and my mother-in-law who was on her way to Norman to visit her fiance, so J.J. was forced to watch show after show until Daddy could make it home with McDonalds and an extra pair of hands.

Oh...I forgot to mention that Johnny had been feeling rotten for the last 3 days...so I officially blamed my getting sick on him. Except, his rationale was that I felt worse, so I got him sick. I don't know...men have weird ideas sometimes.

Anyway, J.J.'s eyes got progressively worse as the evening went on and his cough wasn't getting any better either. So the next morning (Johnny stayed home to take care of the boy so I could try to get better) I called and got him an appointment with our favorite Dr. H. When I woke up to them coming home at 11:30, I was informed that not only did J.J. have PINK EYE but also a sinus infection. GREAAAAAT! Sorry, everyone at school! I exposed your kid to pink eye!

So the next three days consisted of me laying in our bed, taking my beloved Z-pack (I had some kind of infection...the P.A. I saw didn't really tell me what it was) and letting Hadley crawl all over the bed. Meanwhile Johnny (whose sinuses were so clogged the dr. couldn't even see if it was infected...she just knew and therefore prescribed our friend Mr. Z) and J.J. (suffering 4 times a day through Daddy forcing eye drops and then 2 times a day ingesting yukky antibiotic) relegated themselves to the living room, leaving the door to our room open so they could talk to us, but keeping the baby gate up in the doorway so J.J. couldn't come infect the baby with his eye funk. Oh let me not forget that on Saturday morning, J.J. barfed all over the kitchen. We're chalking it up to too much swallowed mucus. At least I didn't have to clean it up...what a saint of a hubby I have! All in all it was a great weekend. Ahhh...motherhood.

Except for one tiny little detail I neglected to mention: Sunday was J.J.'s 3rd and Johnny's 29th birthday. And Saturday was supposed to have been J.J.'s Cars party at our church. Needless to say, the festivites were postponed until NEXT Saturday (as Johnny's mom is getting married this Saturday). But I guess it turned out okay...it gives me more time to get stuff ready for the party. I just felt awful because the poor little guy (and the big guy, for that matter) didn't really get a big fuss thrown about their special day. Which I really hate. Don't get me wrong, we did give him a couple presents on his actual birthday, and we got to venture out to eat at Texas Roadhouse for lunch on Sunday, but it just wasn't the same without the party.

And now we're still stuck in the house because Jack Frost is nipping at everyone's noses...and glazing the streets. Like I said, it's great to stay in jammies all day long, but I have to admit the stir-craziness is rising up in me.

But you know what? I have everything I need here in my house...food, warmth, running water, electricity (Lord willing!), my adorable kids, and plenty of stuff to do. And it's not like I'm really itching to get out on the road with the rest of the morons who don't know how to drive on ice...even though that's all we usually get here--you'd think we'd be pros by now! But I'm not relishing the thought of packing both my children into Phyllis (our van's name, christened on a trip to Buffalo for Christmas), tempting some nitwit who thinks they can stop on a dime on an inch of ice to plow into us. So for now, I'll stay all bundled up by the fire, with a nice cup of coffee and read J.J. a story while Hadley blows raspberries, just so she can hear the sound.

Ahhhh....motherhood.