Exactly four minutes after picking up the boys from school on Thursday afternoon, Emil opened his mouth, vomited all over himself, and continued to do so for the remainder of our 20 minute drive home. After arriving home, as he stood outside crying while I disrobed him and decided that the car seat was too far gone to salvage, Oliver stepped inside the house and vomited all over himself and the floor. The two of them continued, violently ill, for the next 8 hours. Hence no blog post on Friday. I stayed up with them until 1am so Andrew could work the following day and realized that being sleep-deprived is quite definitely my Achilles heel, that if you want to destroy my attitude, my concentration, my patience, my creative thought (hell, any rational thought at all), just keep me up all night and then wake me up early in the morning. Destroyed.
10 towels, 6 pairs of pajama pants, 3 complete bed changes, 17 bucket changes, 2 baths, and countless loads of laundry later, both boys woke up slightly sleepy but otherwise completely fine. Friday was spent at home building a cardboard castle complete with working drawbridge, three separate “chambers,” a secret door, a megaphone, a tunnel, a mailbox, a transporting chute, a lookout tower, and a weapons arsenal.
Though certainly not pretty, it kept three housebound boys happy and occupied as I checked their health status. We wondered about food poisoning, as it seemed to hit the two who had spent the day together 20 minutes apart and Milo seemed fine, but we found out on Sunday night that our thoughts were wrong as poor Milo ran to the bathroom for his own round of sickness. We made the decision on Friday afternoon to keep our plans to go out with our friends Jamie and Brian on Friday night and were so glad we did (but really, really hope we didn’t get the sitter sick now). Milo put Emil to bed at 5pm (in Milo’s top bunk, with Emil dressed in a red coat) and I transferred him to his own bed (coatless) an hour later before the sitter came to take over.
We had such a great time with our friends, we left smiling and warmed by their friendship, always wondering why we don’t hang out more often (life gets busy, we have so many little kids between us), and vowing to make it happen. 
For Valentine’s Day, I went out on a special date with my dearest Ingrid. We snuck into Small Batch without reservations and sweet-talked the hostess into letting us steal a table until the next lovebirds came along. We had the most amazing meal, starting (and finishing) with dessert. We had the most satisfying conversation about the past year, which for neither of us was our most favorite year to date. But sometimes reflecting on how ass-backwards or unlucky things have been (and being sure to laugh about most of it) is the only way to move forward and make good goals and promises about what’s to come. It’s already feeling like a luckier, more productive, happier year, this 2015. I mean, aside from the vomit fest over here. Hey, it could have been worse, right? Right??? My goal is to make it through March (which history has shown over and over and over again to be my unluckiest health month) unscathed. If that happens, I’m going to do a victory dance. Mark my words.
Have a lucky week. Or at least a decent one.
