Still Sick, Thanks For Asking. And You?

By now, you are no doubt tired of hearing about our tragic, besnotted existence, and wish that we would move on to other topics. I hope that it comforts you to know that I am at least as tired of being besnotted, and that I would dearly love to have other news to report. However, we are now on day 7 of the Pestilence Party, and it is really all that we have on the table right now, activity-wise. Max is more or less recovered, which is good. Maggie, on the other hand, who was showing no symptoms of anything until Thursday evening, suddenly got in on the fun by having her eyes turn red, gooey, and swollen. On Friday, she woke up with one eye swelled almost shut, causing me to break a 2 1/2 year streak and make the first ever doctor's appointment due to illness that either of my children has ever needed. While we waited for the appointment time to roll around, my eye turned pink, too. Imagine my heartfelt delight. My parents came over to stay with Max while I took Maggie to the doctor (and when you wonder, Granny, why I let you get away with all your paranoid fussing over choking hazards and etc., it is because you also come over early from work so that I don't have to bring both kids to the doctor). The pediatrician annoyed Maggie by shining lights into various parts of her, and then declared both she and I a cesspool of viral ick, and helpfully told me that we would just have to wait it out. And so we are. Waiting.

Maggie, despite her woes (observe the swollen eye?), has somehow found the time to learn how to take everything out of the toy cupboard and then climb into it. Then she can't figure out how to get back out, and gets mad. It is a much less fun game for me than you might imagine.

Max, as aforementioned, has pretty much gone back to normal after four days of snotty, coughing, oozing, feverish good times. His nose ran so forcefully and plentifully for so long, however, that he still has a little chapping around the upper lip from wiping it so much, as you can see. (He is crying in the picture, by the way, because he is unhappy that he cannot be in the picture and simultaneously observe the picture being taken in the little digital camera window. Stupid physics.) Also, now that Maggie is sick, he is angry that she is getting more than the usual amount of attention, and so he took it upon himself yesterday to disagree with every single solitary thing that I said or did. And I really mean EVERY SINGLE THING -- if I said, "Good Morning, Max!", he would say, "It's NOT morning. It's NIGHTTIME!" I was in the final stages of negotiating with the circus, to whom I planned to sell Max at bargain rates, when my parents showed up yesterday and took him off my hands.