While we were on our Denver trip, Lily’s sickness took a turn for the worse even though she was on antibiotics. Even though it is end of quarter, I decided to take a day off to help her and the kids get healthy. Honestly, I should have been more checked in during the last two weeks, and perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so bad, but being with Lily and the family in Denver so much really helped me to be more aware of just how sick Lily and others in the family were.
Honestly, I love dad days. It was really sad that Lily was sick, but home is where I am happy and I had a really good day.
In the morning I sluggishly got myself and the kids ready (I was still tired from the drive yesterday). I made Mary put on tights when she came to the car looking like this:
I dropped Lydia off at school, cleaned the car, took Lily to the doctor and then took Mary, Ammon and Clarissa to the doctor. For Mary, we were mostly interested in her pooping problems. We learned that she is constipated, so her colon is constantly stretched so her brain doesn’t know when it is time to poop and when it is not time to poop, and additionally sometimes soft poop will squirt around the hard stuck poop and obviously sometimes it will all finally come out in a huge poop. Sounds exactly like what I’ve been observing with Mary. We got a recipe of laxatives to loosen her up over the weekend and to use repeatedly until she’s cleaned out. I joked with her that she will be like the Hippo we say at the zoo that shot projectile poop in a wide spray when it pooped.
After all the doctor stuff we came home and Lily and I fed the kids and I rested some with Lily. I also gave Lily a short foot rub before it was time to pick up the Lydia. The day was also a little crazy because I was committed to keep all my one on ones with everyone on my team at work. One on ones are an area where I have cut corners in the past, especially when I was a player coach, and I’ve decided they are one of the most important parts of my job, so I made sure to connect with every rep, even if it was during crazy moments (like Clarissa tantruming in Trader Joe’s because she didn’t get a sample which she thought was applesause, but really was gnocchi with marinera sauce).
After picking up Lydia, I took Mary to her eye appointment, got more sickness stuff at CVS, picked up dinner at Spicy Thai, picked up Mary and headed home.
Dinner was great because all of the kids ate a lot of food. They were motivated by my insistence that they finish if they wanted their fortune cookie. Ammon’s cookie literally read, “Keep your mouth shut” or something like that. It was supposed to be some ancient Asian wisdom. Mary commented that that was great advice for Ammon who wines a lot. It is true that he has been wining a ton in this stage. It was just me and the kids for dinner. Lily and Georgia were having some mother-daughter chat time
After dinner, I found myself outside with all of the children except Lydia, who has been reading FIVE HOURS PER DAY in order to win her reading contest at school. She has also been exceptionally grumpy lately. Perhaps it is all the reading throwing her off balance? At any rate, I’m extremely proud of her commitment. I also got a sense for her competitive nature today. When we were in CVS she was telling me about a girl at school who is so annoying to her because she is perfect in every way and seems to do everything better than her, but then Lydia said, “but I bet she wont read as much as me in the reading competition.” 5 hours is literally the maximum they are allowed to read.
Outside with the youngest three kids, they all started to jump on the trampoline while I lie on the ground digesting my curry like a comatose snake after a kill. It was so fun watching the kids on the trampoline. Eventually, I got the new bluetooth speaker dad and Suzanne gave me and I played music for the kids to jump to. They all took turns jumping to their favorite songs. Here are some adorable clips of them jumping.
After that I chatted with Georgia, and tidied the house. Now it’s time to figure out what tomorrow will be like…….