Yesterday around 3:45 p.m. I awarded myself the highly coveted BEST MOM EVER award which was not coincidentally around the same time Caroline and I sat in the pediatrician’s office and he said it looks like she has the flu.
I decided late last night that I was going to let her stay home from school no matter what because she woke up around midnight crying and telling me her whole body ached which is totally uncharacteristic for her. So I turned off the alarm and decided we’d just sleep in. Sadly, no one gave Piper or Mabel the memo because they were raring to start the day at 5:15 a.m. I managed to hold them off until 6:00 but then Piper took things up a notch by leaping into the bed and landing on my head and that tends to wake you up for good.
So I got up, fed the puppies and started my day. Mabel was supposed to see the vet at 9:00 a.m. but the office called and said her doctor was sick but I could drop her off and the other doctor would see her when he could. And so I threw on some clothes and drove her to the vet which is just a whole other level of crazy. Mabel already tends to be a little high strung and co-dependent, but now that we’ve basically been glued at the hip for almost a week, the two of us are a house of cats away from being Big and Little Edie living in Grey Gardens. She wasn’t happy when the vet tech came to take her away and I thought for one horrifying moment she was about to attack the old Australian shepherd who wanders freely around the vet office.
After that bit of drama, I made a stop at Starbucks to get coffee for me and a frappuccino for Caroline and then made my way back home. Caroline was awake and we spent the next hour or so lying on the couch while I tried to decide if I should take her in to see the doctor. Then, right about 11:00, she looked at me and said, “I think I’m going to go lie down and take a nap in the bedroom.”
ALERT. ALERT. SHE TRULY FEELS HORRENDOUS.
This is a child who has voluntarily gone to sleep approximately three times in eleven and a half years. And so I tucked her into bed and immediately called the doctor’s office for an appointment. The doctor looked her over, listened to her symptoms and declared that she either has a mild case of the flu since she got the flu mist or a flu-like virus, but it didn’t make sense to test her since it’s past the point for Tamiflu.
We left the doctor’s office and made a quick stop by the vet so I could run in and pick up Mabel whose whole body began to shake when she realized Big Edie was there to pick her up. She was so excited that she dragged me to four different cars before I finally got her loaded into mine.
I took my sick girls home, put one on the couch and the other in her dog bed. Everyone took their medicine and I decided the only appropriate thing to do was make homemade mac and cheese for dinner. We all needed a little comfort in the form of carbohydrates. I think the lesson here is I need everyone to get well or I’m going to have to go see a cardiologist.
And as I write this, Piper has once again discovered her new favorite place in the world.
She believes it’s the perfect place to warm up right after you’ve eaten the three Hershey Kiss foil wrappers that your mom accidentally left on the coffee table.