We are finishing up a beautiful week of Spring Break. We started the break by heading to Branson with some good friends and taking in all the OKWU basketball games for the NAIA DII Men’s National Basketball Championship. Yep – that’s the championship that our little school won last year. This year... Well, they made it to the Final Four and lost by 3 points. I’m convinced that if there hadn’t been quite so many fouls called that we would have been playing in the Championship game with a good look at winning it all again... But that was not to be.
We stayed with our friends and created such fun memories – including recreating the Dixie Stampede using the Daddies as horses. So much laughter!
After that we had a few days of just Veale time and then another family joined us for fun at Silver Dollar City and Lamberts. We always enjoy spending time with them and feel so lucky to have their friendship!
But yesterday morning the fun ended. Mia woke me up in the early hours with coughing and crying because her throat hurt. She was burning up. We fed her some Tylenol and tucked her into bed with us. When we got up and moving for real we discovered that Maggie had a fever as well.
We sent our friends on to Silver Dollar City for their second day of Ozark adventuring and packed ourselves into the car to head home. Getting home was so nice – for some reason it’s much more comforting to be sick at home rather than in a condo or such. I don’t understand it, it’s just the way I feel!
Since a severe winter storm decided to hit Oklahoma today we have had this sickness coincide with several inches of snow and little desire to go outside anyway!
So yesterday and today we have had touchy, grumpy, fevery little girls. Maggie’s on the upside of the sickness now, but I think that Mia’s right in the middle.
As I was snuggling with them just now I felt the blistering heat coming off of Mia and started thinking The Worst. While I know logically that this is a cold and will pass, that little niggling fear is always in the back of my mind – I think it happens to most mothers.
What if I’m not responding to this sickness correctly? What if I tuck her into bed and wake up tomorrow and she’s gone? What if... What if...?
If she’s gone have I done enough for her to have known how much I love her? That I’m willing to sacrifice for her? That I admire her? Have I written enough down that would recreate the essence of my child if these memories are all I have to hold on to for the rest of my life?
It’s morbid, I know. I also think it’s fairly normal. Especially at 1:20 a.m.!
I was talking with my friend about why I blog/email updates. It’s about you – I really want you to feel like you know our little ones since we’re so far away.
But in so many ways it’s about me.
It’s about creating a space where I do my best to capture the personalities and quirks of these little creatures I share life with – it’s about having a space to write and vent when I feel like a pressure cooker about to explode and just need to release tension.
I know now that there have been many, many visits from people since the beginning of this year to the blog (gotta love statcounter – until then I thought that the blog was being read by my family and a few grasshoppers in northern Pennsylvania based on the few comments I receive!) and I’m so thankful that you bother coming by to read about our boring lives! Thank you!
And selfishly, I’m going to use this space to brag on my kids. And tell stories that amuse Isaiah and me. And pray that somehow, someway, this life we’re living will make some sort of a difference somewhere along the way.
I’m not sure it will make a difference to our kids. They have little to no respect for us at this point. Or maybe it’s just tact! For example:
On our way out of town on Friday Isaiah drove the girls to an auto parts shop because in January I backed into my neighbor who decided to park his truck IN the street. We had to replace the dented area and our parts came in. On the way to the shop Mia tells Isaiah:
“Daddy, you weigh almost as much as our car!”
He found that quite uplifting considering we’re driving a GMC Yukon.
About as sweet as when Mia told me she was waiting for me to die so she could have a pet cat.
Or when Maggie shut the bathroom door in my face because, she “wants privacy.” Or in a grumpy response today told Isaiah that he couldn’t hold her because he needed to, “Leave me alone!”
But then there are the joys.
- Like how both of the girls have learned to say I love you to us.
- Or that when you offer Maggie something she will say, “No but thank you for offering.”
- Or that Mia has a love affair with God and Jesus and likes to sing the song with the kids wearing different colored t-shirts (Jesus Loves the Little Children).
- Or that Maggie now wants to be a juggler when she grows up.
I really can’t complain. Even when they’re feverish. And it’s 1:30 a.m. :)
JJ
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