Not the Best Way to Spend the Weekend

Sadly enough, I still haven't had the opportunity to go over my conference materials.

Wednesday afternoon, one of the twins woke up from his nap, walked into the living room, and laid his head on my lap.

Uh, oh. Not a good sign. When the twins wake up, whether from a nap or a solid night's sleep, I usually get surly, grouchy answers to questions, and shrugged off attempts at hugs. A child willingly walking into the room and cuddling with me is foreshadowing to danger ahead.

He felt warm, but I rationalized he had just woke up from a nap, snuggled under the covers, and that was the reason he was warm. Then he told me his mouth hurt.

"Where?" I asked.

"Back here," he whispered, and pointed to the back of his throat.

Oh, no.

He sat with me a few more minutes, but after his brother got up, they went off to play, and I never heard another word from him until later that night. I went to my bedroom to work on a manuscript, and 30 seconds later, my son followed me into the room.

"Mommy, I want to lay with you."

"Are you ready to go to bed?"

"Yes, I want to lay with you."

Another bad sign. At 8 o'clock at night, the boys are playing in the bath for half an hour, begging for just one more chapter from a book, basically fighting bedtime tooth and nail. They DO NOT volunteer to go to bed.

He tossed and turned beside me for two and a half hours, and when my husband came to check on us (and remove the wayward child from his side of the bed to the child's own room), I asked him to get a thermometer. Temperature was 100.3. Within two more hours, he was throwing up.

All over my sheets. All over my blanket. All over the clothes I had folded on a chest at the end of the bed. All over the bathroom floor. Everywhere but the toilet.

We called the doctor first thing in the morning, after a VERY long night, and got an appointment for later in the afternoon. He spent the day in bed, and missed his last day of school, the fun party day. I had to keep the baby and the other twin separated from the sick child, and managed to get them all loaded and to the doctor's office, where my husband met me...and my child threw up again in the parking lot.

The doctor took one look at him, checked his throat, and made his diagnosis. Strep throat.

AAAHHHHHH!!!

I have horrible, awful, terrible memories from my own childhood of strep throat. I catch strep throat by saying the words. And now I am treating a child for the infection. We even took precautionary measures, and filled a prescription for antibiotics for the other twin, just in case he comes down with the same symptoms.

So we will see how the next few days go. I pray I manage to skip the disease this time around, and no one else in the house gets it either.

See you Monday, and have a great Memorial Day weekend.