Thanksgiving Sickness

For the last couple of years, we have gone to Sam and Tatum's in Orange County for Thanksgiving, and Tatum and I have split the cooking duties.  This year was no exception.  In accordance with our tradition, I was in charge of rolls, potatoes, a green side (I did a salad and a traditional green bean casserole), and pumpkin cookies (I've done pumpkin pie in years past, but Sam's not a fan). 

I stayed up super-late the night before trying to do as much as possible in advance.  Thanksgiving day, the plan was to let Dolly take her morning nap and then head up to Sam and Tatum's as soon as she awoke.  Jim, however, decided to vacuum as soon as I put her down for her nap, despite my texting him recently about how I did that and she woke up and would not go back to sleep.  (He's an I-need-to-learn-it-on-my-own kind of guy.)  So, true to form, Dolly awoke and would not return to sleep. 

We finally made it to Sam and Tatum's, after a late departure and bad traffic.  (Southbound traffic was completely stopped, so we were grateful we were going north.)  Tatum wanted to plan for dinner at 5:00 so that Tess (their going-on-two-year-old) could join us, as she sleeps from 1:30 to 4:30 or 5:00.  Not long after we arrived, I put Ever down in a pack n' play for her afternoon nap.  I broke the cardinal rule of always checking her diaper before I put her down.  She cried sporadically and never seemed to really sleep.  When I finally gave up and went to get her, I discovered a nasty diarrhea blowout.  I felt really bad about the fact that my failing to change her diaper before I put her down had possibly contributed to the fiasco.  But at least it made Jim and me even in the ruining-naps department. 

We cooked and snacked all afternoon.  Dolly and Tess (while not napping or trying to nap) crawled around and played with Tess's toys, although their interaction with each other was minimal and generally acrimonious.  The boys found a really dumb but surprisingly sort of enjoyable Hallmark Christmas movie, which I watched a bit of.  We didn't sit down to eat until about 6:00.  Tess had an inexplicable meltdown when Sam tried to put her in her booster seat.  Ever was thrashed because it was almost bedtime and she'd had no naps.  After dinner, we put Ever to bed, hung out for a little while to digest, and then had dessert.  (Tatum had made a delicious apple crisp and a cherry pie.)  Then we rolled ourselves out of there and headed home.  Our tradition is to play miniature golf after dinner, but the kiddies' schedules made that impossible this year.  Jim and I will savor our title as champions at least another year. 

It turned out that the naptime diaper explosion was the beginning of a terrible illness.  Dolly's diarrhea continued for days - blowouts every time.  On Saturday, the vomiting began.  One night, she started screaming.  I went in and changed her diarrhea diaper in the semi-dark.  Then I thought, "It still stinks in here."  So I took a closer look at her crib and discovered multiple piles/pools of vomit at the bottom of her crib.  The next night was a similar story.  I went to change and deal with Crying Baby in the middle of the night.  I tried to stroke her hair back when she was on the changing table and discovered that her hair was plastered to her head with vomit.  She had dunked the whole front half of her head in puke. 

Monday and Tuesday, Jim and I took turns staying home from work with her.  After a few days, she began refusing all sustenance.  One day she took a total of about seven ounces of formula.  (A normal day is at least 24 ounces.)  The next day she still wouldn't take anything.  I was at work that day, so Jim was the lucky one who got to take her to the doctor and get her an IV.  He said it was so awful and I wouldn't have been able to handle it.  I am sure that it is true, as evidenced by my handling of another minor injury she sustained.  During the whole starvation period, Dolly was playing under the table (see discussion of her under-table workout here: http://whitandjim.blogspot.com/2012/11/11-months.html) and somehow bit her tongue and made it bleed.  She freaked out and screamed and screamed and screamed.  I couldn't really tell how bad it was, and she wouldn't stop crying.  I handled it very well - called Jim and then started crying, myself.  She eventually calmed down, and I determined that it was a very small cut.  But I couldn't believe the luck - just another reason for her to refuse food and drink.  She ended up not being bothered by her tongue for too long, though, thank goodness. 

By the following Saturday, nine days after Thanksgiving, Goose Chase was finally back to her old self.  We think she picked up the virus from our babysitter's kid.  He is about 10 or so and had had one day of vomiting two days before Ever was over there.  Of course Dolly also passed the virus on to Tess, but Tess likewise had a much milder (and shorter) version of it.  All in all, it was an unfun week, but we survived Dolly's first really bad illness.