Pass the Pedialyte

This week the Fab Four and I were laid low by a nasty tummy bug. This is the fourth time for the babies to be sick: They had a cold in August, roseola in September, another cold in November, and now this. Each time, it's been hard to care for all of them at once, but this time has been the most difficult to date.

For one, babies give you little to no warning that they are going to vomit. Therefore, they can crawl up to you, sweet as can be, and suddenly BARF! All over you. The resulting mess is not their fault, though, because another problem is that little ones cannot aim their puke. In the past few days, we have not only had to do a lot more laundry—theirs and ours—but also Ted (aka Super Daddy) has had to clean up vomit from the table, the carpet, the couch, the linoleum, the wall, the gate, a pack 'n' play, a crib, shoeboxes, and even a drycleaning bag! Each new incident would set off a circus, as we frantically tried to decide what to do first: grab some rags to soak up vomit, change our clothes, clean up whichever baby got sick (as well as any other baby that was in the line of fire), or keep all of the babies from crawling around in the mess.

The worst part of it all was that there just wasn't enough of me to go around. At one point, all of the babies were miserable and crying for me to pick them up. As I would hold one close and feel him or her relax, three others were tugging on my jeans, wanting the same attention. How do you choose who gets to be in Mommy's arms? I couldn't. I just had to rotate who got to be in my lap, temporarily ignoring the cries of the others so that one child could feel the comfort of being close to Mommy. A friend of mine speculated that this must have been heart-wrenching. Yes. Yes, it was.

Thankfully, Ted was able to take a day off work yesterday to run things around here while I was feeling my yuckiest. This also allowed me to concentrate on spending quality time with the babies, who were also still feeling puny. Ted is such a wonderful helper—I can't imagine how I'd cope without him! And now that the rest of us are on the mend, we are praying that Daddy manages to stay healthy. The entire family needs to be well in order to enjoy the babies' first birthday next week!