Ugh! The sickies have hit our house.

So I wrote yesterday (I think) that Miss-D had a fever on Sunday night and stayed home from school with me. Of course, last night she went to bed just fine, but woke up at 2:00 a.m. with a fever of 103. I gave her Motrin and she went back to sleep. She woke up this morning at the usual time and seemed just fine -- no fever, no glassy eyes, perky, good appetite, fine. So off to school she went.

At 10:00, I get the call from the school to come get K-Wiggles, as she is having a hard day and has a temperature of 102 and is complaining of ear pain. Well, ear pain means off to the doc we go. Turns out her ears are fine, but she does have a swollen and sore throat. Rapid strep came back negative, but I had them send it in for the 24-hour culture since her symptoms had come on so recently.

I just heard this afternoon from my carpool-mate that her strep test today came back positive, so my guess is K-Wiggles has strep. Who knows if Miss-D has it too. She hasn't said anything about sore throat and has been eating fine. K-Wiggles didn't eat breakfast this morning, which is very unusual for her and I should have guessed something was up. Mama's a little slow sometimes.

Anyway, it's 5:30 now and they are all in bed. K-Wiggles fell asleep almost immediately. Miss-D will lie quietly in her bed and be asleep soon, and M-Moo has been out of her room once already, so she should be pretty much done for the night. Hopefully they will all sleep through the night, or else be up once to have medicine and go right back down.

I suppose they're all going to stay home from school tomorrow. It's not really worth getting up and dragging everyone out of the house to get M-Moo to school, especially when she's probably contaminated too. Maybe we'll just sit out the rest of the week and go back next Monday when everyone should be healthy. (Actually, now that I think of it, there is no school on Th/Fri this week anyway because of parent-teacher conferences, so I guess we're done for this week).

Hopefully Miss D will be feeling better by Thursday so she can go to her promotion ceremony for karate. Last Wednesday she earned her white-belt-with-yellow-stripe, her first new belt since she started. Woohoo!

If I were the praying type, I'd ask all to pray that Mama-V doesn't get sick -- goodness knows mamas aren't allowed to get sick!

Happy Girls.

I haven't written much about the kids lately. Sorry for the dearth of photos... there are some on the camera, I think, but I haven't had any time to upload them. "haven't had any time" Sounds familiar, huh? Well, it matches how I feel today. Thinks are reaching "stress" point and I need some "me" time. I thought I had some today, getting my hair done, but it turned into a stressful event itself and, well, I didn't enjoy it (though my color looks great now!).

So instead of doing the work I should be doing tonight (which would lower my stress level tomorrow, huh?), I'm going to go watch a movie.

Anyway, the kids are great. They have been really happy lately. Poor Miss-D was sick last night and stayed home from school. It was kinda nice to spend time just the two of us. I made cinnamon toast for her and she watched movies. I did her finger nails. She made pictures for me and Daddy-J. She was doing ok today, but the fever came back tonight and she's got a funny intermittent cough. I hope she's feeling better tomorrow, poor chick.

Seriously, though, I'm excited with how well they've been getting along lately. M-Moo is toughening up a bit and doesn't cry at the drop of a hat whenever K-Wiggles says something not-so-nice. Miss-D has become quite the little mama/teacher, helping her sisters to use their words and reminding them about their gentle hands. They really look up to her, so it usually works!

And K-Wiggles is getting much easier to rationalize with, rather than just throwing monster tantrums all the time.

As they get bigger and older, they are able to create fun games for themselves. And they can do puzzles together. They even think up crazy art projects to do together and usually don't destroy too much stuff in the process.

They are ridiculously addicted to nightgowns and dresses... where did I get these girly girls?! They love getting their hair done, even K-Wiggles, who bravely fights back tears from the pain of her tender head while I put in her beloved "flip-tails." (Thank goodness a good set of flip tails can last almost a week!).

This time is going by so fast. I just know I'm going to blink and they'll be heading out the door with nary a "mama" to be heard.

Now I'm going to go cry into my glass of wine while I watch my movie. G'night!

The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer

Interesting book so far. The subtitle is "The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Tunred Into a War on American Ideals." Some of the stuff in this book is absolutely terrifying. I knew that the various government agencies, in hindsight, had a lot of information pointing to what was going to happen on September 11, 2001, but I had never read about all of the information in one place at one time. It's horrendous to think about how close we were to preventing 9/11 and yet we didn't. What's really scary, though, is how little we have done as a nation to address the failures that lead to us not preventing 9/11. And then the aftermath is equally terrifying. Learning what those in the highest echelons of government were thinking and doing immediately after 9/11 is very enlightening. The book spends a fair amount of time explaining the history and background of some of the players who came to the foreground in the "war on terror" and how 9/11 played into their world-view and what they were pre-disposed to try and accomplish. Anyway, I'm barely 1/3 of the way through the book, and parts of it are a tough slog. It's not necessarily gripping reading. The stuff I am reading now is about the various legal offices of the government and how they were sidelined and marginalized in favor of what the White House (mostly Cheney, according to this book) wanted to do in the "unlawful enemy combatant" "military commissions." I shouldn't be, but I am still amazed at the careers that were intentionally ruined, careers of good people trying to do their job. Some of them, more than just a few, were absolutely shoved out of government and black-listed in the private sector for refusing to toe the administration's line on torture and rendition and things like that. I wonder if, 100 years from now, we will have a good grasp of what happened to the United States and its most sacred and cherished ideals since 9/11. It is just so so sad.