Be Back Soon

Quick update...I am going through withdrawals from not posting. I've been in Glamis the last two days...I just got back 2 hours ago and still need to take a shower to get the 2 inches of dirt scrubbed off of my skin. So much to write about, like sleeping at a 30 degree angle in a motor home because we were stuck in the sand...I will have pictures and details later, but I just wanted to check in and say hi! I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend! Gotta go...

Oh one more thing, my last post is null and void now. I figured out how to get my family all healthy without the drastic measures...SEPARATION! Yup! The kids went to the grandparents house and Ricky and I went on vacation and now we are all healthy. Woo hoo!

Drastic Measures

Drastic times call for drastic measures, right? Well, right now the sickness that has overtaken my family and has just begun round two this morning is pretty drastic. I am so sick of cranky kids, phlegm, my man voice, and snot covered sleeves. So I am implementing some new rules and procedures around my house. 

- Face masks must be worn 24 hours per day in and out of the house by all members of the Murray family

- Absolutely NO SHARING of anything...this includes sippy cups, forks, spoons, food, toothpaste, toys, beds, etc. 

- All members must wear gloves sprayed down with Lysol at all times 

- If an individual coughs or sneezes in the house, a cloud of Lysol must immediately be sprayed around them 

- All clothes must be changed as soon as a member of the Murray family returns home from work or any other place. Dirty clothes must immediately be placed in the washing machine. 

- Any sleeves that are used to wipe snot must be burned completely

- Any tissue or wipey used to blow a nose, must be thrown away in the dumpster down the street. 

- The cleaning lady must now come every day...(I know this one is a little unreasonable but like I said, desperate times call for desperate measures.)

I really hope that the implementation of my new rules will make for a healthy Murray family. There is light at the end of this mucous- filled tunnel! 

Separate Toothpaste

After about 3 months of being married, my husband informed me that we needed to have a serious talk. My mind swam with thoughts: Oh no is he going to ask me to switch to 2% milk instead of 1%? Is he going to tell me that he doesn't like my cooking? Did he get fired? "The talk" was about none of the above. It was about toothpaste. No, not the type of toothpaste, rather the fact that he wanted us to have separate tubes of toothpaste. He could no longer share with me because the way that I cared for my toothpaste tube was unacceptable, disgusting, and quite perturbing to him. I was devastated. When you're married you are supposed to share things like the toothpaste. What next, separate beds??? My sulking and dramatics did nothing to sway his opinion. From then on, he determined that we would have our own toothpaste tubes. 

The other day, I looked at my toothpaste and then glanced over at his and I finally understood after 3 1/2 years of marriage why my husband would not share a tube of toothpaste with me. 

I know I know, some confessions are better left unconfessed. What will people think of me now? Maybe I should clean up my act...naaaah

Today I...

Was excited to get to sleep in because my hubby was going to handle the kids

Was very un-excited that my sleeping in was non-existent since Maia threw up all over her bed and I was the lucky one who got to clean it all up

Sniffed everything and everyone all day to find out where the lingering vomit smell was coming from. I never did find the culprit.

Did the dishes, but you would never know because my sink is full of dirty dishes again

Discovered that baby wipes are very useful for blowing your nose without making it raw

Coughed so hard I gave myself a headache

Confused my brother when I answered the phone...he thought he called the wrong number because I sounded like a man

Listened to Noah say, "I need to be wee-spet-fuu" (respectful)

 Got in the shower with my bra on

I Knew God Liked Me!

Today I am writing to you from the fog that is in my head. I sound like a man with a deep phlegmy smoker cough. I should have done a video blog, then you could see how manly I really do sound. It is so bad that when I am on the phone with my husband he asks twice if this is really his wife. 

  Anyways, back to my topic...yesterday night at around 6:00, I had to take Maia Belle to Urgent Care because she was just not doing so well after her puking incident. Despite my need to do absolutely nothing but sleep, I got us both ready and headed out the door. On my way to the Urgent Care Center (which is 40 minutes away) I remembered that I had to go pee. I had to go the whole time I was getting Maia ready and getting her bag packed but I was so worried about her that I forgot. Now, I was in a predicament, because in  my rush, I also forgot a stroller which meant that there was no way I was going to be able to go to the bathroom unless I asked a random stranger to hold her. Shoot! Oh well, my skinny jeans had prepared me for this predicament so I tried my best to ignore the pain in my bladder and just focus on getting Maia to the doctor. When I got there, I was so thankful to find my Baby Bjorn underneath the backseat. I strapped my 20 pound baby to my belly paying no attention to the pressure on my bladder, grabbed the other 30 pounds worth of purse and diaper bag and headed into the building. Upon arriving to the pediatrics floor, I looked around to see a packed waiting room with about 30 or more sick children waiting to see a doctor. At the check in, I asked the lady how long the wait was, she informed me it would be about 2 hours. Keep in mind, my urge to pee, my phlegmy cough, and my need to sleep. Then she said that the doctor who was on tonight was Maia's actual pediatrician. Hearing this made the 2 hour wait seem a little less daunting because at least Maia would be seeing her own doctor. Maia and I went to the furthest corner of the room and I unloaded my pained shoulders and settled in.  While praying with her for her dinner, I had a little conversation with God, "Lord, I know that this is a long shot, but you know how awful I am feeling and how awful Maia is feeling. Both of us will be miserable by 9:00 p.m. Do you think you can somehow bump us up in the line? We'd really appreciate it. If not, please help me to keep my sanity for the next 2 hours. Amen." Right as I am about to put her food in her moving target mouth, I hear the nurse call "Mia Moo- Ray." Oh my gosh Maia, that's us! God really does like us. It's a miracle! Our 2 hour wait has only been 5 minutes! Frantically, I waved to the nurse to let her know that I was coming fearing she'd realize her mistake and call someone else. I clumsily gathered all of the stuff that I had unloaded and hobbled over to the nurse ignoring all the death stares that I was getting from the annoyed waiting room sufferers and the things I was losing out of my diaper bag. 

 Maia and I made it in and out of the Urgent Care facility within 40 minutes (two ear infections and chest congestion). I think God knows I would have lost my sanity right there in that waiting room while my bladder exploded and He thought it wouldn't be pretty so He granted me a miracle. I knew He liked me! 

Another Bleh Mommy Day

My house smells like a mixture of cleaning products and vomit. I am ever so grateful to my cleaning lady for the cleaning product smell. It is so nice to walk into a spotless, dust free, tidy house. What is not so nice is to take a 20 minute drive home with a crying sick baby and get home and admire my nice clean house and then have my crying sick child throw up all over me and my spotless kitchen, scrubbed floors, and vacuumed carpet. I've decided that it's moments like these that make me a mommy. I am sure every mom out there has a vomit story like this and I am sure I will have many more. Today, rather than finding the humor in it, I just wanted to sit down in the nastiness and cry with Maia. I too am sick and feel awful and yet here I am cleaning up puke off my newly cleaned house and off my baby (I don't get the luxury of cleaning myself off) and comforting her and rocking her to sleep. That is what you sign up for when you have children...Okay, time to go take a shower, I cannot handle the puke smell on myself anymore...Yes, you read that right. I blogged about the situation before I changed my vomit clothes. Blogging is very important you know...

Dinner and a Vacation

Last night after I put the kids to bed, I felt that I deserved to board a plane to Hawaii for a 2 week vacation without kids. Dinner was quite an event for us as both kids and mommy were sick. After finishing cooking chicken fajitas, soggy mushy rice, and microwaved beans I forced both my crying, coughing, snotty children to sit in their high chairs.  Noah insisted on eating by himself and refused to let me clean his runny nose so he had an extra salty version of dinner. I served Maia's bowl and sat down to feed her. This was unsatisfactory for Noah because he wanted Maia's chair to be as close as it possibly could get to him. To stop his blubbering and stop the fountain oozing from his nose, I pushed Maia's chair as close as I could to his and reached across the table at a sideways angle trying my best to get the food into Maia's mouth failing miserably. Most of her food ended up in her high chair or shooting across the dining room as she chose the most inconvenient times to cough. By this point, I was experiencing hot flashes, a pounding headache, and a painful cough. No time to focus on that, Noah was done and crying again because he wanted out of his chair and he'd been up for 6 hours straight which is way too long for my sleep-loving child. I made him sit for 2 minutes longer: just enough time for me to wolf down my cold dinner. After, inhaling my dinner in record time, forcing my way to Noah's nose with a wipey which threw him into a coughing fit and getting Maia out of her chair and shaking all the food off of her, I got their bath going. I must say that I am very proud of myself for even giving them baths and putting them in clean jammies because what I really wanted to do was skip baths, strip them down, and put them to bed in their diapers which would have been a lot less work. By the time we said our night time prayers and "proper" doses of Tylenol had been dished out, I was in a full cold sweat and wheezing like a 80 year old smoker with Emphysema. I wanted a game show host to appear in my living room and announce that for all my hard work, I had won a 2 week Hawaiian vacation as soon as I was well enough to take it.