Sorry, we're full...

Sorry everyone, this sick ward is full and not accepting any other patients. ugh. What a week it has been! Since last Monday night, we have not slept longer than 2 hours at a time except for Friday night and that is only because we called in grandparent reinforcements before we collapsed! It has been one of the most taxing weeks of my parenthood journey! (sorry, not much beats the first 7-10 days at home with newborn twins). Take a journey with us, wont you?

Monday: Teething Pains
Last Monday the twins were in rare form. Ridiculously fussy, not just fussy actually, pure screaming and crying most of the day. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't play together, they just wanted to be held. Every time I tried to hold them both in my lap, if one even touched the other, the world collapsed again and the shrieking began. After some investigation we found that Caden had 2 bottom molars trying to pierce through and Jenna did too!!!! It had already been a long day when I went to Bible Study that night and asked the girls to pray for relief from the teething and that we would have a better day Tuesday! ha!!!! is all I can say about that now. This is the best I can remember at this point!

Monday Night: Norovirus Victim #1
Caden lets out a loud, shrieking, very different scream around 1 am-ish? I go in there just in time to see him sit up and puke all over the place. We get him up, change him, change the crib sheets and lay him back down. This happens more through the night. Famous last words: I tell Ryan sometime around 2 am and our 2nd or 3rd throw up, "I hope this isn't that norovirus!"

Tuesday Night: Norovirus Victim #2
Jenna wakes up sometime before Midnight and can NOT be calmed down. Ryan and I try many things all through the night. At one point around 4 am I take her in the bonus room to hold her so we can get some sleep. After an hour she is still squirming and wont fall asleep. Around 5:30 I'm about to LOOSE it and go to try the one thing I haven't yet. (Tylenol didn't even calm her down!) I went to change her diaper and oh my! How can diarrhea that bad have no smell!? I promise I didn't smell it all night. Anyway, bless her heart, I apologized to her all day. In the mean time, her little diaper area looked like a chemical burn it was sooo agitated.

Wednesday: Norovirus Victim #3
Jenna has horrible diapers and screams each time I change her diaper most of the day. No naps are to be had today. ugh. Ryan gets home early so I grab a quick nap to get me through the night! He says his stomach hurts...I tell him it's just b/c we're exhausted from the last 2 nights. :) nope. wrong again. Around 7ish or 8ish...it unleashes. I'll just say that everything you hear about Norovirus is putting is politely compared to what it does to your body! So between Jenna and Ryan, no sleep this night either. We almost made a ER trip for Ryan at one point it got so bad.

Thursday: Fever and a Cough
Finally the morning came. Along with a phone call for 2 showings on our home. Probably should have cancelled those but I lysoled and chloroxed like it was my job. All while Ryan was too weak to move. So I packed him up and took him to his parents basement so he could sleep and get rest all day. That left me with cranky twins. No nap today either. ugh. I pick Jenna up at one point and she is on fire. It is so easy to tell when she has a fever. When I checked, yep, 103.4 and she acts every bit of it pitiful. I pack them up to pick up Ryan, disinfect the basement and come on home to try to have one peaceful night. Actually, I was convinced I would be victim #4 since it was claiming a victim each night! Anyway, Thursday was anything but peaceful...Jenna didn't sleep longer than 45 minutes maybe. Ryan needed to rest and sleep so I took all of Thursday night...allllll of it. Nothing helped Jenna, she kept waking up Caden who just wanted to sleep and was getting agitated with me and Jenna having our sleep battle! During the night, when I did drift off to sleep, I thought I heard a weird cough coming from the nursery but was too exhausted to know for sure.

Friday: The Croup all nighter
By Friday am, I am done. I need help. Ryan needs to get hydrated before he can have any energy to help me so what else do you do? CALL GRANDMA. (oh yea, before Friday, both Grandma's were out of town AND Aunt Robin and no way would I call anyone else into our family death plaque). So as soon as Mom rolled home in the driveway,I was sending a text begging if we could come over. So the twins and I head over to get some Grandparent love (twins) and a nap (ME!). We got both and lunch and dinner and some extra treats too. Jenna continues to develop a horrible dog bark-like cough anytime we lay her down so, yep, no nap again. We develop a plan to send Caden home with Ryan and my parents and I would tackle Jenna. Good thing we did. The boys had a great, uninterrupted night of sleep. My parents got no sleep. We took shifts holding her upright all through the night. Needless to say it wasn't good sleep for anybody except me b/c my parents sent me upstairs. I didn't move and my pillow was covered in drool...that's good sleep :) Jenna kept her fever and horrible bark and started to develop a rash so to the weekend doc we go.

Saturday: Spreading the Love
Here are the highlights from that appointment: 1-the Doc said he couldn't connect all the viruses together and just said we were having a horrible week. mmm thanks. 2- he was shocked at the state of Jenna's "diaper rash/ yeast infection" after I had been putting special cream on it so he wrote a prescrip for it. (it is horrible, folks) 3- said she had croup, yeast infection and hand/foot/mouth disease 4- told me Caden would most likely get it since it is so contagious if he didn't already. 5- said Jenna's mouth had lots of sores so no wonder she wasn't eating and sleeping.ugh.
Of course you can't do anything for HFM or the Croup cough as long as its controlled, so we left with a cream prescription for her diaper rash and yeast infection. double ugh. That night my Dad texts horrible words...we gave the Noro to Mom. She is super sick. Triple ugh. This day I also start having a sore throat...I tell Ryan I am going to mentally get over it...it's all mental :) (plus some Tylenol hehe). We are up alot through the night with Jenna still. Ryan tries to sleep on the couch with Jenna strapped in the Baby Bjorn. Pitiful, uncomfortable yet hilarious all at the same time. That only lasted an hour or two. We have moved Caden to his own bedroom for now so he can get his handsome sleep.

Sunday: more of the same
We are housebound excpet for 2 more showings (one was a 2nd showing so no way were we cancelling that one!)Can I just explain how hard it is to keep two kids, the same age, doing the same things, away from each other!? They have always swapped paci's, they aren't old enough to know which sippy cup is theirs, they are drooling maniacs thanks to those molars trying to pop through. Nonetheless, we have desperately tried to keep saliva and all other body fluids to themselves so Caden doesn't catch this HFM. Jenna's rash has turned to blisters and some of them are open sores. She has it on her mouth, feet, diaper area, and inside/outside of her mouth - PITIFUL!. On top of this, we find that our freezer in our garage was somehow unplugged and things are thawing! So I proceed to make 40 empanadas, pork loin roast, a chocolate chess pie and we still need to make like 5 lbs of stuffed shells, 2 pizza's and another pie. it simply might. not. happen.

Monday:
I think that is tomorrow...and there is no telling what it holds! Please pray for us, please? While your at it, praise God for protecting me from my choice of illness' this week! Me and R joked that although I had stayed healthy all week, I look just as bad as all of them...worn out! haha Pray for Caden's protection and for my sweet baby Jenna to heal just as quickly as this all came on her! Her croup has stayed under control so far with us holding her upright at night and hot, steamy bathroom sessions so that is a wonderful praise!

And in the meantime...STEER CLEAR of our house! :)