around here

Sebastian's pose screams, "just photoshop everyone else out and my senior portrait is all set to slay"

I think I've finally found a small army of allergy fighting soldiers that when combined just right I can handle short outdoor excursions with my human troops. Not pictured: mom photographer in low key hazmat suit. You think I'm kidding.

Anyway.

The polite and thoughtful thing to do would be to just breeze right over the little stomach bug that rocked our world last week but ... I can't. It felt like all of my friends had dealt with the bug in the weeks and months prior and I'd been waiting for it to hit us too and when it ... didn't I thought maybe I had the warm weather and lack of cabin fever to thank. LOL. It was an uncharacteristically optimistic thought, I know. It was actually mercifully swift and since it worked it's way up directly from youngest to oldest Simon and I (youngest spouse first!) were last to be hit. Except that we weren't! Brit had talked about how her family has had great success taking this activated charcoal in the hopes of avoiding a bug that had already descended on her family and it came in the mail after the kids were sick but the parents took it anyway and ... we lucked out. Or it works. All the praise hands for Brit. And the charcoal.

It's both fun and funny watching your kids grow up and see little flecks of parental personality shine bright and unmistakeable every now and again. For example: one child fell ill in the middle of the night, gently woke me up by tapping on my shoulder and saying, "excuse me, Mom but there was a little spit up by my bed but I cleaned it up" and trotted back to his chamber. This child takes very much after Simon. And another child got sick shortly after the other and screamed the loudest most earth shattering and blood curdling scream about the situation and declared multiple times, "this is the worst day of my LIFE" the next day. This child takes very much after Grace. God has a great sense of humor. A great sense of humor indeed.

Third and final paragraph about the minute long plague. At one point one child was sick with no appropriate receptacle to be found anywhere around us and so I asked someone else to run and grab a bowl. They came proudly bounding back with this:

a wildly useful colander.

I'm done. Really.

A photo of Bosco to cleanse your palate ...

Never met a swing he doesn't adore.

In other news, we finally put a hook and eye HIGH up outside the kids' bathroom door to keep one certain almost-two-year-old off the premises and out of the sink that she loves to plug and flood.

Completely unfazed, she redirected her efforts to her parents bathroom and her moms brand new bottle of badly needed (32 going on 16 ... yee to the haw) concealer.

The best part of the situation is that she looked my in the eye, legs completly covered in a lovely shade of Natural by Neutrogena, and answered, "nope" without blinking when I ask if she made the mess.

We now lock our door as well. Fool us once ... we'll figure it out one of these kids.

We'll end things on a cheery note. I was bathing the kids on Sunday night (or 1/2 watching 1/2 reading a book I've been waiting to come off the hold list f-o-r-e-v-e-r judge me good) on my phone when I had to quickly snatch a toppling Bosco out before he fell face first into the water. You know how this ends. My phone fell to a watery but temporary grave as I'm telling myself that in the spirit of the Resurrection ... it came back to life. I just turned it off and didn't touch it for a long time. I don't think my complicated and calculated phone-saving tactics mattered (we didn't have rice on hand) but ... I should probably just put bite the waterproof case bullet.

Life is a dangerous highway, after all.

Have a wonderful Wednesday
(that for some cruel reason ... feels like a Friday)

:)