Invisible enemies

I tried sharing this video on Charlie's birthday, but I don't' think it worked. This is a little clip of what was a good 20-minute long fight between Charlie and his 2 invisible friends: Invisible Brad and Monkey-stash. Invisible Brad is a character from a TV show. Monkey-stash appears to be a name he came up with all on his own.

Lesson learned

If you are going to do a trust fall with a 4-year-old - which I don't recommend in the first place - don't neglect to tell him to wait until you tell him you're ready before he falls. Sam was cleaning the library which somehow turned into doing trust falls with Frankie and Charlie while I was making supper in the kitchen.

Not aware of what I was interrupting, I asked Sam a question about his upcoming science fair. He then left the library to come talk to me. Suddenly we heard a huge crash followed by a cry. Not noticing that Sam had left, Frankie climbed up onto the desk and went through with the trust fall with no one there to catch him. Fortunately he was more scared than hurt and got over it pretty quickly.

We also had an interesting time playing Sorry! with Frankie for the first time. It start off a bit rough, of course, because it was taking awhile for him to get a 1 or a 2 to get started. He got a couple of Sorry! cards, though, so he was able to get out that way. Pretty soon he hid under a blanket and said he didn't want to play anymore. He seemed a little upset and we were encouraging him to keep playing. It finally came out that he thought he was getting in trouble every time he got a Sorry! card because we were telling him to "say sorry."

And here's a video of Frankie eating spaghetti through a straw. He did successfully get a few through, surprisingly.

Influenza strikes

Elena came down with influenza on the first day of Catholic Schools week (as did many other students at school). She missed the entire week of school, and was still quarantined the weekend afterwards.

Although we did our best to keep the germs at bay, Charlie came down with it on Saturday. He had friends over and they came down to tell me they couldn't find Charlie. We found him asleep in his bed with a fever. He also missed an entire week of school.

Not surprisingly, Olivia came down with it on Monday. I was happy at least that she and Charlie were nice enough to get sick at the same time. If we had continued to tag team, this thing could have drawn out for 7 weeks. We got Olivia on Tamiflu, which helped tremendously. She was pretty much back to normal by Friday other than a runny nose. Her fever also never went much above 102, while Elena's neared 104.

The two girls in their new matching outfits...one day before the flu hit.

After a full weekend of no one being sick, we thought we might finally be on the mend. But then Sam threw up at school this morning and came home with a stomach bug so we might just be starting all over.
Seth and I so far have managed to get by with sore throats. I felt tired and icky for one day, but fortunately/unfortunately it was a rare free day with nothing going on. Fortunate because we didn't have to cancel or change any plans - unfortunate because we were finally planning to catch up around the house.

Speaking of the house. Holy buckets have I realized how much I depend on Elena to help with Olivia! Having her out of commission for a week and not able to touch Olivia at all set me WAY behind on pretty much everything. It didn't help that any free moments were consumed with nursing the sick and washing anything that was potentially infected. Too bad I couldn't really wash the air which is how influenza travels...
Sam stepped up to help as much as he could, but between sports and cousins right next door he just isn't around as much.

We frequently comment on how patient Olivia is, which is very nice for a 5th child. During her week out, she continued to live up to her reputation. As long as I was holding her, she just laid in my arms and dealt with the sickness. She rarely complained the whole time. Although, I thought I was behind before she got sick! Add to that 4 full days of doing almost nothing other than holding and soothing a baby and yikes! It's a good thing we have developed a high tolerance for destruction and chaos around here.

Still as we watched friends of ours end up in the PICU with their little guy whose influenza turned into pneumonia (he's home today!), all of this really amounts to nothing worth complaining about.

Feeling better! (Photo courtesy of Sam)