The "Not-So-Lovely" Valentine's Week

This past week as been long and very tiring for each and every one of us. We knew that Ty would be flying nights for the majority of the week which is never an easy transition and then when Carter came down with what we thought was a bad cold on Monday night, the kids and I seemed to go down in a tailspin.

Tuesday evening was spent in the Urgent Care on base. Only a mere 2 and a half hours later did I walk out with two bottles of antibiotics and two extremely tired children that still didn't feel well. That night, Carter spiked a fever every 4 hours so, it took alternating Motrin and Tylenol to keep him comfortable. Thankfully, by Wednesday's sunrise, Whitleigh was back to her same ol' sassy self so the demand of two sick children had been cut in half. However, poor Carter couldn't seem to get over his "bug" no matter how many glasses of water or bowls of chicken noodle soup he had. He missed school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday which didn't seem like a big deal to me but Wednesday was Carter's Snack/Show-in-Tell Day and in Kindergarten language that's kind of a big deal! When I broke the news that he wouldn't be going to school that day you'd have thought I'd just committed a crime like selling the Wii or destroying the 294 piece Star Wars Tie Fighter that's in his room. Tears, anger, frustration- you name it. The day's forecast was set to be a terrible, horrible, no good, VERY BAD DAY! And, that it was.

More fevers, coughs, runny noses, etc. Ugh. We aren't good sick people. Come Thursday morning, I'd had enough. The medicine clearly wasn't working so something else had to be going on. But what? He had antibiotics in his system since Tuesday evening, what more could it be? I placed a call in to the doctor and they got us in that afternoon. Turns out Carter's tonsils were the size of... HUGE... and covered with infection. It was strep throat. The doctor asked if the Urgent Care had taken a strep test when we were there the other night to which I replied, "They didn't even look in his mouth!"

Thankfully by late afternoon the medicine had made a small improvement on the issue. He took a small nap in the afternoon and still fell asleep that night at 7:30pm. On Friday morning, Carter walked into our room fully dressed at 8:00am, ready for school. He hadn't had a fever in almost 24 hours so I thought, if he felt up to it, he'd go to school for the morning. After all, it was the Valentine's Day Pizza Party and I was already dreading the thought of breaking the news to him if he had spiked another fever during the night. I felt him and Phew... crisis avoided. He grabbed his bag of valentines that he'd worked so hard on through all of the mess and ate his breakfast in record time. He and I stopped by the store and picked up some tulips for his teachers which were semi-smashed by the mass of children that ran up to hug and greet Carter when he walked in the door. "Carter's BAAAAAACCKKK!" Apparently it IS a big deal to miss 3 days of Kindergarten. At noon when I picked him up, he was all smiles and was so proud of himself because he ate 2 whole pieces of pizza! He had a full bag a valentines and couldn't wait to get home to read all of them.

That afternoon when Ty got home, we all seemed to have the same exhausted look in our eyes. The kids were in bed by 8 and Ty and I followed close behind them. So far, our weekend hasn't proven to be much more exciting either. It's consisted of a lot of naps and watching the Olympics which seems to be the PERFECT medicine for us after our not-so-lovely valentine's week.

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Here is Carter working on his Valentines. His cheeks are bright red from his fever and he had to take 2 breaks during the process of writing 22 valentines. Completely uncharacteristic of our task driven 5 year old!

Whitleigh and I got to have a few hours to ourselves on Thursday morning while Ty stayed home with Carter. Whitleigh got her hair trimmed and her nails painted with little hearts put on them. She walked out of the salon like she had just been handed the Miss America crown!