Friday and Saturday of last week were beautiful, so the kids spent a lot of time playing outside.
They made a swing in the gateway. It was all fun and games until Juni fell off and really mangled her back on the walkway bricks.
So they set up camp in my garden bed.
At the end of last week, Atticus and Finneas had both spent a day feeling under the weather and feverish. On Saturday, Laurelai and Penelope were both down for the count. While most of the kids were able to attend a birthday party for a friend, the two big girls had to stay home. Lolo was running a fever in the afternoon, so she wasn't able to go to church the next day, even though she was feeling a bit better. So once we got lunch eaten and the babies down for nap, she and I started watching the seventh Harry Potter movie, since we don't often get opportunities to watch when the younger kids aren't around. Penelope came home from church a little while later and joined us.
Feeling crummy on her half-birthday
Through the weekend, what we thought was a case of molluscum under Juni's arm kept getting worse. She was so uncomfortable and itchy.
On Monday, Todd woke up feeling terrible, with a headache and likely a fever, but he had already taken off the first half of the week so he could attend presbytery, the annual denominational meeting of elders in our region. It took place in Illinois, so he was staring down the barrel of a six-hour drive. He made it, but it was a rough day of travel.
Feeling better once they arrived
Before he left in the morning, we were kind of discussing how bad Juni's rash was getting, and somewhere along the line it had also spread to Callista, Oey and Eulalie. And it was everywhere on Juni, including spreading into a new wound she got falling off the swing the previous Friday. I started to feel like it was maybe a staph infection.
I ended up deciding to try Amazon Health to get her looked at. It has literally been years since any of my kids has needed to see a doctor, so I was feeling kind of skittish, but I was so impressed by the whole experience. We saw a doctor in less than an hour from the time I began submitting the appointment request and filling out the forms; the doctor was helpful and knowledgeable, and she was really surprised by how fast it had spread. It turns out it's impetigo, a kind of staph, and she prescribed the topical antibiotics we'd need, and like four hours later the ointment was delivered on my porch. All for less than $65 for the visit and the meds. It was a huge blessing.
Monday afternoon, our first official day of break, was rainy and cold, so after I ran to Home Depot to buy paint for the girls' room, and got the little kids down for naps, and had the telehealth appointment for Juni, we watched the first Harry Potter movie. Later in the evening, after dinner and the younger kids went to bed, Lolo, Penelope, Atticus and I watched the last HP movie. (The kids are only allowed to see the movies once they've read the books, and those three kids are the only ones who have read all the way to the end so far.) Atticus hadn't seen the last three movies yet, though, so he's kind of watching them out of order, and this was his first time seeing the final one. He really enjoyed it, so I figured we could spend more of this rainy, cold week watching our way through them all.
Penelope ordered a huge Lego set to keep herself occupied through the week of down time.
All finished! It took up about half the week.
Tuesday, Todd was still gone and it was still rainy, and Rocco was sick and running a fever. Penelope worked in the morning, so she was gone. I spent the morning and early afternoon bribing the healthy kids with M&Ms to watch the babies for me so I could paint the girls' room, then we watched the second HP movie during naptime once Penelope was home.
I haven't finished the room entirely yet - I'm waiting on a few last pieces of bedding to arrive that I ordered this week, so I'll wait to do an official before-and-after, but here's a sneak peek:
Before
In the middle
It looks so good in there now, after looking so bad for so long. I'm excited to see it finished-ish. (I still want to find some stuff to hang on the walls, and am in the process of washing all the new bedding before getting it on the beds.)
Todd had Wednesday off to recover from his trip, so he and I took the babies to pick up milk in the morning. Atticus had woken up on Monday with a rash under his arm, and by Tuesday it had spread all over his torso. Amazon doesn't do health calls with kids between the ages of 12-17 (probably because of different consent and privacy laws, depending on the state you're in) so I wasn't sure what to do. I knew the ointment I had on hand wasn't going to be enough, and with how widespread the rash was, I figured he'd probably need an oral antibiotic anyway. So during naptime on Wednesday, we all watched the third HP movie, then I took Atticus to the minute clinic for antibiotics.
The doctor looked at it and said it could be impetigo, and he'd prescribe antibiotics just in case, but it might also be pityriasis rosea, which Penelope had once and it looked exactly like what he's dealing with. My gut feeling is that it is, in fact, pityriasis, which is viral and just has to run its course, but I'm having him take the antibiotics anyway, since we know we have staph in the house and open lesions are just a welcome mat. (I'll make a note here: the minute clinic visit and meds cost $170 with cash pay. Amazon Health seems to be the obvious choice when the option exists.)
Random placement of photos of the kids playing with the turtle
Anyway. Why do I tell you all this? To try to communicate just how consuming and overwhelming medical stuff has been this week. Not only have we had to make the call to juggle doctor visits for the first time in forever, but every single towel, every single shirt, every single set of jammies has to be washed every day. Sheets have had to be stripped and washed. The affected kids have had to be showered every day with medical grade antibacterial soap. Medicine has had to be applied multiple times a day, and bandages changed. Juni was in so much pain and discomfort Monday night that she couldn't sleep, so she kept coming in overnight. If I had been more mentally awake, I should have just had her sleep in my bed since Todd was gone, but I didn't think of that in the middle of the night, so it was a lot of in-and-out all night. (We never let the kids sleep in our bed past infancy, so it didn't even occur to me while I was half-asleep!)
It's been tiring, and I still have no idea how or when I'll dig myself out from under this horrific pile of laundry demanding to be folded. But I do feel like we're on the upswing - the meds seem to be working and drying things out, and no new spots have shown up on anyone since Wednesday. Praise the Lord.
Wednesday night we stayed up late with the big kids to watch the fourth HP movie. Rocco had semi-recently read the book, but he hadn't seen the movie yet, so it was special to get to include him in a "big kid" movie night.
Yesterday was weirdly Harry Potterless. The little kids have watched all the movies they're able to, and the next one on the list (the fifth) will have to be an "after bedtime" movie with the big kids. But tonight is the night before Finneas' birthday, so he's getting to stay up late to watch a movie of his choice (he picked We Were Soldiers), and tomorrow night Todd and the older boys will be at Men's Beer and Books. Saturday night we won't stay up late, since we'll have church the next morning, and Sunday night we'll need to get to bed at a decent time in preparation of starting back to school on Monday. So who knows when we'll actually finish up watching through the whole series, but we're too far in to give up now. I'm fully invested in making this happen. So we'll see.
Callista did not like Harry Potterless Thursday, so she checked out the audiobook of Chamber of Secrets on Hoopla and has been listening through it.
Unrelatedly, Knox is shining his brightest.
I spent yesterday running errands with the kids. We went to the car wash to vacuum out the van, then ran to Aldi to pick up a few things for Finneas' birthday meals today. After lunch, we ran to the Dollar Tree so the kids could pick out some birthday gifts. In the afternoon, Penelope helped me do my menu planning and grocery planning, and Atticus drove Finneas to the military surplus store to pick out a birthday gift. I got the hydrangeas in the front flowerbed cut back. Last night, I cooked the world's worst pork chops. And now here I am: blogging and staring at Mount St. Laundry and trying to decide if I should try to squeeze in a workout (because, oh yeah, I forgot to mention I started an exercise challenge this week).
Whew. That was our week. I'm not sure if it was a lazy, lay-around, watch-a-bunch-of-movies week, or if it was a productive paint-the-walls-and-do-the-yardwork kind of week, or a everyone-is-strung-out-sick-on-the-couch and visiting-the-doctor kind of week. A little bit of everything, I guess.
Next week we'll jump into our last ten-week trimester of school and I am feeling ready to just tackle it. LFG and all that. So with Finneas' birthday celebrations today and tomorrow, and then church on Sunday, hopefully that will give us enough time to get the sickness behind us so we can start back to school with a clean slate.
Feeling better and taking a more cheerful photo to celebrate her half-birthday!
