And the Hits Just Keep on Coming..

Do you ever have those weeks when you think "If this weren't happening to me I wouldn't believe me?" You are telling people things and you realize you don't even believe yourself it all sounds to ridiculous. OK, so maybe I'm being dramatic, but that is how these past two weeks have felt. I don't mean to complain, and I can't stand it when people always want to tell you how tough their lives are, but I think I have to at least list everything that has happened:

• Let me preface this by saying that my mother was out of town for the past few weeks at my sister's house, so I don't have my "please come help me" person.
• Let me say first that I started working for the first time since the girls were born. Not full time, but part-time consulting work that I mostly do from home. I have really wanted to get back to working and so this is a wonderful opportunity for me. So it's important that things don't go wrong. We'll get to the work stuff in another post.
• So about two weeks ago I get a bit of a cold. A few days later the girls get running noses too. No big deal, though a bummer because no mother around to help out extra.
• Then Kallie, the nanny, gets sick. She was planning to come more often over the past two weeks as I started to work. So two days where she can't come.
• Then we go to Colorado. Travel of any kind with two babies is a LOT of work, so this equates to more things to do. Very fun trip, although Dylan really struggled with bedtime in a strange place. But fun wedding, good to sam and gram and lots of our hbs friends, and definitely glad we went.
• We get home last Sunday night, tired. Monday we take it easy in the morning and I figure I'll start getting things done Monday afternoon/evening and Tuesday. I start feeling really sick. First it feels like pregnancy sick, which sorta freaked me out even though I knew that there was no chance in hell that could be it (I mean I'm still feeding TWO babies!) Maybe that was a good scare though because it made what came next seem less scary. What came next was not something anyone wants to read about, but the very basic idea is that I threw up 8 separate times in 8 hours. It was unreal.
• About halfway into it Andrew gets sick too. Do I need to remind you that we only have 1 bathroom? It was almost comical and I am so grateful to the girls for sleeping through most of it. We figure it must be food poisoning because it hit us at the same time and went through us pretty quickly.
• So Tuesday morning rolls along and Andrew cannot even get out of bed. I somehow manage to get out of bed just enough to try to take care of the girls, but I even had to break my rules and turn the TV on for a bit because I could barely stand up long enough to pick them up and had no ability to interact with them.
• Wednesday things seem to be looking up a bit. My mom is on her way home and I have Kallie all day Thursday to get things done. I am about to have my first business meeting on Thursday since becoming a mom and i am very excited.
• Thursday morning, 8am, Charlotte throws up for the first time IN HER LIFE. Two hours before I leave for my meeting. I'm such a clueless new mom I'm thinking "what bad timing" and "what a coincidence." I almost cancel my meeting, but then talk to Kallie and she makes a good point "it isn't the next three hours that are the big deal, it is 24 hours from now that you have to worry about." So I go to the meeting and Charlotte throws up once while I'm gone. I still figure that maybe she just had a bit of an upset stomach.
• I get home and, instead of checking various things off my lists, I take care of Charlotte while Kallie plays with Dylan because she has been a little neglected since Charlotte's been sick.
• Kallie leaves at 4pm. At 4:10 Dylan throws up in a major way, at 4:30 Charlotte does the same. I--FINALLY---clue in to the fact that this was not food poisoning but the flu, a flu I had now given to my little daughters. In desperation I call my mother who has just gotten home and is exhausted but of course, saint mother/grandmother that she is, she drives over even as I tell her that she might get sick (andrew is 2-3 hours away at best).
• My mother helps me get them down and I prepare for the night. I don't know what I thought I could do to prepare. Basically I had always wondered what would happen when they both got sick, and last Thursday I found out. Andrew and I got at BEST two hours of sleep while the poor little girls threw up all night long. They would cry and move about for about two minutes before throwing up, throw up everywhere, look really dazed, and then smile a few minutes later because they felt better. It was so sad.
• So the girls were sick until midway through Friday. I called Kallie as soon as I realized that it was the flu and apologized for exposing her, but she wasn't sick yet so we were hoping she had escaped it.
• Saturday morning my mother calls me, TOTALLY sick. Sunday morning Kallie calls me, TOTALLY sick. So now I get to start the next week off without a nanny, and this of course is totally my fault. I feel like my entire apartment should be quarrantined.
• And just to add insult to injury, I have had no dishwasher because half of my kitchen was w/o electricity, and then I find out that we have incredibly dangerous electrical circuit boards. Sweet.

I do not want to be one of those mothers who always tells you how tough their life is, but in this case I think I am allowed. The past two weeks have been a complete and utter DISASTER and I keep waiting for it to end. Andrew is gone all week and I am cranking to get some work done before Hawaii next week, so I'm REALLY hoping that this week starts to look up very soon. I just couldn't help but feel that the gods were conspiring against me just as I am trying to become a part-time 'paycheck mom'. I really do get satisfaction from working so I'm just going to have to fight through it. As Andrew says "well you know that this is the WORST it is going to get." At least I hope. I do not know how moms who work full time do it. My hats go OFF to them.

I know, I'm feeling sorry for myself and I shouldn't. I am of course incredibly grateful that the flu is the most sick my little girls have gotten since they left the NICU. Andrew was a champion husband this weekend (he always is really) and really helped pick up all the pieces that had fallen over the past two weeks. And we are incredibly excited for Hawaii!!

Here are pics of the girls, at the park again, in my favorite outfits...Cozy Splendid outfits that just make me want to hug them all day long. The other picture is taken outside the Discovery Museum two+ weeks ago, right before all hell broke loose (and yes, it is cold and the girls are dressed in little rompers, and yes, they are wearing each other's outfits...Daddy dressed them and we can't expect him to always remember whose is whose, and we know he is NEVER cold and assumes his daughters must not be either).