A Munchkin and this week's news

On Wednesday, Patrick arrived back at home from a conference in Chicago and the kids and I drove home from our visit to Pennsylvania. On the way home, Elijah started throwing up. So we stopped for a while. I was hoping that he was just car-sick and that it would pass if he got out for a while, plus Molly was DEMANDING pancakes. We pulled off the highway and the right at the exit was a gas station/convenience store/diner. It was the perfect place to stop - we got Elijah all cleaned up and got him some juice and Sprite, and Molly got her pancake. Getting out of the van didn't stop Elijah's sickness though, so I prepared for future puking as well as I could and we set off again. It was a long trip.

Elijah continued to be sick through the night, and in the middle of the night Molly started throwing up as well. On Thursday the kids slept in and took good naps, and eventually felt a little better. They ate a sick kids' dinner - ramen noodles, saltines, and bananas, and actually kept it down.

On Friday at noon, Patrick had surgery to repair a hernia. It went well and he came home by dinner time. By the time the kids went to bed he was in a lot of pain, though, and it was a long difficult night for him.

Saturday morning I took the kids and met Jackie half-way between our houses at a random Dunkin Donuts. When we got there, Jackie and Lily were waiting for us with Munchkins to share! Elijah was not sure about them because they were chocolate, and Molly was not sure about them because Lily gave one to her (instead of Mama) ... she just sat there and looked at it in her hand for a long time.

Elijah went home with Jackie and had a great weekend there. It was such a big help to only have one kid to take care of while Patrick was feeling so terrible.

On our way home from taking Elijah to Connecticut, Molly finally decided to try her Munchkin. I encouraged her to take a bite, but she just popped the whole thing into her mouth. It was too big for her to chew once it was in there (she couldn't even close her mouth over it), so she just sat there for about 10 minutes, looking at me like this:

"Really, Mama? What am I supposed to do about this?" She finally chewed it up and got it down a while later. I was laughing so hard. Poor Molly!

Molly had a second round of the stomach virus over the weekend, so we were just hunkered down here - Patrick watching movies in bed, Molly watching Elmo and drinking juice downstairs, and me trying to tunnel out of the mountains of laundry that we've collected - traveling for most of last week, then all the puking, and then more puking, plus many days of rain + wind, which at our house means keeping towels packed around the front and back door so that all the water doesn't come inside - so lots and lots of wet towels.

Patrick is getting better and better every day. He's still in pain and pretty tired, but so much better than he was a couple of days ago. He's keeping busy with lots of movies and comedy while he's stuck in bed. Here's a pretty fruit arrangement his coworkers sent to him the other day. Cool, huh? And yummy, too!