We're all sick.

Again.

It's been never ending this season.
If I'm not popping a couple Advil myself, I'm wiping my 50th snotty nose of the day, or wrestling a child, WWF style, to the floor to administer some form of medication.

It hasn't been fun.

And with every one else, it's alright - Pretty much your run of the mill sick behavior - teary, tired, lethargic behavior.

But not with Chloe.

Healthy Chloe is a force to be reckoned with, but she holds no measure to Sick Chloe.
My hands shake as I even type the words....

When Chloe is sick, we all go into survival mode.
We shout out orders for more tissues from the top of the stairs like army seargeants. We crawl on our bellies with Tylenol bottles in our mouths and water sippies cupped in our hands to avoid the things that are probably being thrown or are spontaneously combusting around us. There are noises you've never heard and veins you never knew you had that will appear on your forehead.
It becomes a war zone. We wear helmets and hasmat suits.

The worst of all is that she cannot handle the feeling of her nose even STARTING to run. This means that every 5 seconds, she puts on a petrified expression and shouts, "Mama! Mama! I NEED A TISSUE!!!!!!" to which I respond by wiping NOTHING and then repeating all of that again in just a few seconds.
We've tried responding calmly that it doesn't appear her nose is running, but that only brings on writhing and crying and wringing of her hands with screams of,
"I can't do it myseeeeeeeellllllllf! PLEASE! Heeeelllllllllllllllp meeeeeeeeee."





She becomes demanding, telling us what we "have" to do and saying things like, "I just can't eat my dinner. I'm in too much pain."

Yeah.
True story.
We rolled our eyes, too.

Besides all this, we've been majorly cooped up. I feel like this old house cat I used to housesit for named Chelsey. Chelsey wasn't ever let out and would sit at the cracked window for hours with her nose pressed against the screen just trying to at least breathe some fresh air. The owner would always warn,
"Don't open the door too wide. Chelsey will bolt."

I feel Chelsey's pain.

The other day I got out for two glorious hours with my mom to do some shopping and I felt like I was in a musical where birds sing along to your tune and there's dancing in the streets.
Where random street vendors hand you fresh bouquets without expecting payment.

But then I returned to mayhem.

Justin's eyes were bugging out of his head and as I opened the door I immediately heard Chloe yelling, "Daddy!!!! I need my nose wiped!!!"
"I'm coming!" he said.
Then he fake cried for a minute.

At this moment, the dog spun by.

And poor Alena, with all of her pre-teenness just asks to go to her room a lot and has begun locking the bathroom door to get just a minute of peace.
Sometimes I want to ask if I can come in there with her and maybe we could just sit and fiddle with bath toys and plot our escape.

The other day we climbed into her bed together and a few seconds later heard Chloe approaching and my first instinct was to say, "hide." or pretend to be asleep as if I were 5. I just didn't want to get up and get a tissue.

Justin has spent all his days off helping take care of the girls and me. He doesn't do well with being confined, though. It's never long before the need for a project takes over. He needs some way of physically working out his stress.

This time that need worked itself out in the way of him completely ripping out all the plants in the back yard while I wasn't looking. He says he's going to expand it so there's more room for the kids to play. This is a great idea, actually, at least in theory - I just was surprised to one minute gaze out the slider to my back yard and it's full, soft Heather and climbing potato vines, and then the next, look out and see this:



But - I have chosen to trust. Trust and hope this is not a repeat of what we now call "The Cafe Door Incident"
I don't even think I need to explain.

He reminded me that I get the indoors as my domain, and he gets the outside.

Right about now, I'm not so sure I WANT the indoors to be my domain.

I'm just hoping all this sickness means we'll have a really healthy summer. I need to believe that. I'm actually clinging to that hope for dear life.
I've just got to get out.
My skin is starting to look pale and ashen from lack of sun like I'm some sort of mole person. Even my fabulous Neutrogena 3 in 1 under eye conceiler is struggling to conceil what I've got going on.

I wouldn't trade it, though. Not even for the days of sleeping in until noon.

To coin John and Kate: It might be a crazy life, but it's our life.

Now, if you'll excuse me - I have a nose to wipe.