A long day

I didn't sleep well last night, so I slept in this morning a little bit due to my tiredness and a lack of children screaming at me to let them out of their cages . . . I mean, rooms. I went downstairs at about 8:30 (I'd woken up with Eli at 6:00, fed him and put him back to bed) and was assailed by a daunting smell as soon as I reached the bottom of the stairs. When I opened Miriam's door, I found Miriam soaked in diarrhea and her bed covered in throw up. Poor kid.

Fortunately, she felt pretty good all day, has no fever, and hasn't had a repeat of either symptom--which is great because all my children were exposed to swine flu last week. This is not swine flu.

Also fortunate is the timing. If my children feel the need to get sick, it is much better that it happens this week and not next week when I'll have house-guests (YEAH) and the reunion.

Unfortunately, Miriam threw up in the middle of the night sometime, didn't want to sleep in her bed, and slept the rest of the night on the floor. You can imagine what her brand-new carpet smelled like/looked like. Sigh. I spent all day cleaning. First wiping down every surface in her room, then washing her floor with a steam vac I rented, then cleaning all the parts of her carpet that still smelled (I used to think Mom was so obsessed when she'd sniff around the carpets trying to find sources of odors). Then I had to clean the bathtub where I'd rinsed her sheets. Since I had to clean part of the bathroom, I decided I might as well clean all of the bathroom so I gave it a thorough cleaning. I even washed the yellow spots off the ceiling. I know Kami wouldn't care, but it needed to be done and having visitors is a good kick in the heiny. Then I decided I should steam vac the upstairs carpet, which is nasty as we have no entry-way, so I straightened that room and vacuumed. Then I decided there would be no point in steaming the carpets if people were tracking the dirt from the kitchen floors onto the wet carpet, so I mopped the kitchen and dining room.

Then I made supper and got the kids to bed. Or, more accurately, Timothy put the kids to bed while I pinched Eli to make him cry so I could sit and hold him for a few minutes. I didn't really pinch him. Really.

Then I bugged Timothy by starting the steam clean process. Let's just say that of the two of us, only one has the ability to do a job that requires patience. That person, ahem, is not me.

After Timothy did some Elder's Quorum stuff, he kindly offered to take over the vacuuming. I kindly let him. We were both pleased. I was able to get the dishes done and Timothy was able to do a much more thorough job. In my defense, to really make a difference you had to stand there and go over the same spot about 6o billion times. Not my thing. I just realized that wasn't much of a defense.

To Timothy's credit--our living room looks world's better.

Now, here's hoping that either Emeline and Cowen both get sick tomorrow and get over it in a day like Miriam did. Or they don't ever get it.

And just so you know--our camera cord that plugs into the computer isn't working so I haven't been able to post a bunch of pictures I wanted to post three days ago. Grr.