Spoiler alert: an extremely long, rambling, and probably quite boring exposition on our last six days of existence here on Egan Street. Consider yourself warned.

My to-do list for today very plainly says, “Don’t blog until after weekend,” with a row of smilies after it, but I’m realizing that since I’ve started blogging again, I tend to write about the good. And mostly just that. It’s easier to post cute pictures and expound on the toddler and his kitty than it is to even try to begin delving into the hard.

But if there’s any time to try, it might be now. Because it’s been hard. There hasn’t been a lot of sweet or cute or easy. And maybe instead of waiting till I have something fun to write about, I should just jump in now.

So at the risk of sounding like I’m complaining, here goes . . .

Eric came home from work last Friday with chills and the beginnings of a fever. As the evening progressed, so did the fever. Out came all manner of supplements and tinctures and homeopathic remedies, but when the fever hit 104 and sleep was impossible, out came the Advil as well.It’d been a very long and hard two weeks prior to this of Eric being overscheduled and overworked, and to have him end up sick like this just at the beginning of what should have been a nice weekend at home seemed dreadfully unfair. I hoped against hope that a good night of sleep would cure what ailed him, but of course I knew better. I’ve said before that he rarely gets sick, but when he does it’s hard and fast and really pretty bad.

This time was no exception. Saturday began with no fever, but it certainly didn’t end that way. Lots of blankets and couch time and resting and drinking and taking this concoction or that one . . . Just plain fevered miserableness curled up in a blanket on the couch. 🙁 I felt so bad for him.

Meanwhile, I had already had plans to finally move Sebastian into Alec’s room on Saturday. Our master bedroom has another little room right off of it, and that’s been Sebastian’s room ever since we moved here. Now with another baby coming, it was time for the boys to make good use of their new bunk bed and get used to sleeping in the same room.

In hindsight, it might've made the weekend a little easier if I hadn't decided to tackle that amidst the sickness, but I kept feeling like I was putting it off, and I wanted to get it done in plenty of time before the baby came so we could hopefully iron out all the wrinkles of that nighttime routine before I was getting up multiple times a night anyway with a newborn.

So along with playing nursemaid, I busied myself throughout the day with moving Sebastian’s pillow and stuffies and Yogurt Bear and clothes to Alec’s room. I hung up little pictures on the wall by his new bed and made a big deal out of him finally getting to use the new blanket Grandma Roth had made for him. Sebastian moving in meant Alec had to move to the top bunk, so he got little pictures by his bed too, and his bunny moved up, and when it came time to test it out during nap time, he was a champ. Hurdle #1 crossed with flying colors.Bedtime went wonderfully as well. I was worried Sebastian would get up ten times asking for a drink like he usually does or that he would at least yell for his mom one or two times, but after I put them in bed and Eric told them a story, they both went right to sleep without a problem. That felt like a big blessing. Hurdle #2 crossed with flying colors as well.

Although the evening started well in relation to the boys in their new room, it didn’t progress nearly so well. Sebastian woke up howling a couple times, and I had to lug myself out of bed and go running down the hall to get to him before he woke Alec up. Thankfully he was always easy to resettle and Alec didn’t ever wake up.

In the morning two little boys came trundling sweetly down the hall to find us still in bed, and Eric was feeling well enough to get up with them so I could get a little more sleep. We all ate breakfast together for the first time all weekend, and then we did Bible Time with the boys since we wouldn’t be going to church.

That’s when we started realizing Alec was acting really lethargic. He and Eric laid down on the couch, and before we knew it Alec was fast asleep. This is the little boy who rarely takes naps anymore, and when he does it’s with the help of a melatonin gummy. This is the little boy who pretty much never “just falls asleep.” But asleep he was, and when he woke up after an hour and a half (most of it on the long-suffering and not-feeling-so-great-himself Eric), he had a fever.I mixed up a concoction of vitamins for him, and when it came time for Sebastian to take a nap, Alec took one with him. Two naps in one day for my non-napper. Unheard of. It was detox baths all around after nap time, and lots more lying on the couch for Eric and Alec, both of whom had fevers on and off all day. 🙁Eric, bless his sweet heart, played a few games of Boggle with me after supper, which is something we haven’t done in eons and which was extra special to me after a weekend full of taking care of sick people. I had mixed up so many tinctures and touched so many hot foreheads and washed so many sheets (of course Alec would have to get sweaty sick and/or pee the bed as soon as I moved him into the top bunk where his sheets were harder for a huge pregnant lady to change) . . . but at least I wasn’t sick as well. From the looks of it, it was miserable. Thankfully, the fevers were gone by bedtime though, and we all went to bed early.

Good thing too, because Eric and I were very rudely awakened at 1:30am by two bright-eyed, grinning little boys turning on our bedroom light. They seemed wide awake and very pleased with themselves, but thankfully they also seemed to know it wasn’t actually morning and went back to bed without a fuss. I did have to get up every half hour or so till 3am just to keep them quiet in their beds though.

And then it was Monday, and I wasn’t surprised at all to wake up and find Eric getting ready to go to work. He always seems to manage to get sick on the weekends, and while he wasn’t completely fine yet, he was apparently well enough to go back to work. I worried he would set himself back and would have gladly kept him home, but off he went.

I’d been afraid all weekend that I would wake up dreadfully sick on Monday and not have anyone there to help me with the boys, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. Sebastian and I were both still well, and Alec had no trace of a fever or even that he’d been so sick the day before. It was kind of amazing actually.

He was, however, incredibly grumpy. It was nice to have a normal morning after an abnormal weekend, but the boys fought and fought. Some days I can handle the fighting well; other days it's hard to remember I'm the mom and need to be the one to help them figure it out. It's easier to just get terribly annoyed and snippy, which obviously doesn't help anything. I'm pretty sure Monday was the latter. 🙁

Nap time was terribly eventful as well. Alec is used to lying down for a bit while I get Sebastian to bed in the other room and then getting up and playing quietly in his room while listening to a Ramona Quimby audiobook. Of course, he couldn’t do that with Sebastian sleeping in his room, so I put him to bed with the understanding that after Sebastian was asleep he could get up and take some of his crafts to the green room to listen to Ramona. Only Sebastian didn’t go to sleep and didn’t go to sleep. I felt bad to make Alec keep lying there, and I didn’t figure he’d go to sleep anyway, so I let him collect his stuff and go to the green room, which is right across the hall. That really set Sebastian off—he thought he should get to get up, too. I ended up holding him until he fell asleep, something I pretty much never do with an almost-three-year-old.

When I finally got Sebastian back in bed, I came out to find poor Alec crying hysterically in the green room. I asked him if he’d been crying the whole time, and he said he had. With a fan going in the boys’ bedroom, I hadn’t been able to hear him. I felt so bad. Something about being alone in the green room while his mom and brother were in his room with the door mostly shut must’ve been just too new and strange for him. Through very uncontrollable sniffing and hiccups, he told me he wanted to go back to bed.

That in and of itself was a bit unbelievable to me. Maybe he's turning over a new napping leaf. One can hope so.

Anyway, after I helped him calm down, back into his bed he went, and lo and behold, he actually went to sleep. That was wonderful, but then Sebastian got up crying and asking where Alec was because he didn’t realize Alec had gone back to bed and was sleeping in the bunk above him.

Sigh. Thankfully no nap times have been quite that traumatic since.

After naps, the boys and I mixed up a double batch of molasses cookies since they’d both been asking to make cookies. It wasn’t till they were all mixed that I remembered that my oven coil was burnt out and we couldn’t bake them anyway. Not that the boys minded. They like the mixing up of the cookies almost more than the eating of them.

But that meant we needed to go get a coil sooner rather than later. Eric got home from work fairly late, and then we ran to Keizer, but Lowe’s didn’t have a coil anyway. 🙁 The Lowe’s trip pushed out the boys' bedtime to later than usual, and then Alex and Eric had work stuff to be discussed, and by the time it was bedtime it felt like yet another day had flown by without much Eric in it.

I knew I should be thankful no one was sick anymore, and I definitely was, but those two long weeks of working almost nonstop and that one long weekend full of sickness were really starting to wear on me. I just wanted an evening at home with my little family, with everyone happy and well and not running from this to that.

There's always the hope of tomorrow.

But Tuesday didn’t change that. Alec was so grumpy and whiny all day; I about despaired. Eric wasn’t feeling just the best again, but he kept working anyway, pouring concrete of all things. The second batch of concrete he poured was outside and needed to be covered before it froze overnight, so what do you know, we ran to the farm store in Keizer after supper to get a bunch of animal bedding for him to use, and then after we put the boys to bed, away he went again.

Send help.

But then came Wednesday. Up got the boys, and out came Alec’s whining. I’d had enough, and I knew from the other days that punishing for whining wasn’t getting through to him. I’d kept hearing Abbie Halberstadt (M Is for Mama) on Instagram talk about her Penny Reward System, and while I didn’t ever go look to see what she actually did, I decided to implement my own penny reward system. Any time the boys said or did something kind, they got a penny to put in their piggy bank.

You should have heard the “You’re nice, Sebastian,”s and the “I love you”s that started happening after that. Little feet pattered back and forth down the hall all morning, happily taking pennies from the kitchen counter to the coveted piggy banks. Honestly, it worked wonders.

I know rewarding good behavior instead of punishing bad behavior doesn’t always work so beautifully, but it certainly did this time, and it was just what we needed to have a really good day. Alec was a much happier boy, and I commented several times to him that it felt so much better to say good things than bad things, and he agreed.Unfortunately, Eric felt worse again all day, and I was beginning to feel sick, too, but that small win with the whining shone a new light on the rest of the week for me. I made the most amazing chicken fajitas with all the toppings for supper, and there was time for Eric to help Alec work on his new preschool book after supper, and Sebastian even got to watch a few of his favorite singing videos. Poor Eric felt pretty rough again all evening though. 🙁 Thank God for a man who pours into his family even when he doesn't feel good. He even replaced my oven coil for me.

The week’s not over, and we’re not to the weekend yet, and today has had more whining in it than I would’ve hoped, and I still don’t feel the best, but Eric woke up feeling better than he has in a while, and the boys both napped long, and the sun shone today, and another weekend is almost here.

I can’t wait for the weekend. If we can all manage to stay well, we’re surprising the boys with a fun little outing involving a train ride. They're going to be beside themselves. 🙂 I suddenly realized that once our new baby comes we’ll wish we had done a few more fun things with the boys before we were home-bound, so a few more fun things we will do.

Now to stay well. And maybe to find more pennies.