On how our week got worse.

And yes, we thought that each of the kids nearly drained their gastro systems in the past 48 hours that they could very well have been emptied by Wednesday. Nope.

We made the decision to take the kids to the sitter's house on Wednesday, assuming that they were on the mend. Nancy later reported that Lincoln was particularly fussy and that he had more than 3 blowouts and his bottom was now a burning hue of raw. Elaina, on the other hand, was greeting by her fan club of her 2-4 year old friends at the sitter's house. It was quite adorable to see that all of the kids had genuinely missed her and glad to see she wasn't sick anymore. Go ahead.... "Aaawwww!" Me too.

Wednesday evening, I thought Lincoln had had his last diaper explosion until he started again around 7:00. At one point in the evening, Elaina was crying because Mommy wasn't able to tend to her every whim, Lincoln was crying because he hurt all over, I was crying because I couldn't do much for either kid and I was fearing that Lincoln was going to end up in the emergency room if his explosive poo didn't subside. To make matters worse, Eric was bowling and the whole bitter anger issue over his little hobby was rearing it's ugly, ugly head in an evil way. I'm still hoping that his bowling "commitment" won't be an issue after this year's longest season in the history of bowling.

With my anxiety soaring and the flu virus rampant in our house, I started with some symptoms of my own. We all stayed home on Thursday, with me going to work just for a few hours in the afternoon. Eric later reported that Lincoln had been consuming fluids, both formula and minimal pedialyte and still wasn't peeing it out. My fear over his 3 days of diarrhea and potential kidney damage got the best of me and I called the pediatrician at 10 pm for her to put my mind at ease to be able to get any sleep that night. She didn't seem overly concerned because he wasn't running a fever and his disposition hadn't changed. She wanted to follow up with him in the morning.

Finally, (still with me here?) on Friday, Eric stayed home with the kids again since I have effectively depleted all of my sick time at work and he still has loads of unused hours. Upon Lincoln's appointment with the doctor, she determined that Lincoln had developed an ear infection which caused him not much interest in sucking from a bottle and indirectly led him to become somewhat lactose intolerant for the time being. She suggested having him drink from a cup which he promptly downed 2 ounces of water right in her office to Eric's surprise. Guess we never would have thought of that.

And there you have it. Our nasty week of ill. We made it through and we're all over the hump of feeling better. I didn't even mention how after cleaing up kid puke and poop for 2 days, Keegan decided to unload some of his stomach gunk for me to clean up too. What a family I have. I can always count on everyone pitching in. Or throwing up. Whatever the case may be. Yep, I'm a lucky girl.