It feels like we spent at least half of September and October being sick.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t really be surprised — we pretty much did the same thing Benjamin’s first year of Kindergarten (preschool).  By exposing our little ones, who, up until then, had mostly just been home with me, to a classroom full of new kids (and new germs) it’s kind of inevitable that they will bring everything they encounter home with them and very generously share it with the rest of the family.  I thought that *maybe* it would be different this time — since Liam had already been exposed to all of the illnesses Benjamin brought home that first fall, I thought maybe he (and the rest of us) would already be immune to most of what he encountered and would mostly be spared.  Apparently not.

Most recently, we spent much of mid-October down for the count with some kind of cold/flu as well as pink eye.  (Unless they were just two different manifestations of the same illness, which is certainly also possible.)  Amazingly, I think it was the first time I’ve ever suffered from pink eye, and I know it’s the first time that my kids have.  Liam started getting sick our last morning in Sankt Koloman, and went on to have a week or so of a bad cold, a nasty cough and sticky eyes.  Benjamin and I caught it soon after, and we ended up with about a week where neither of the boys went to school, and over 2 weeks when at least one of us was sick.  (Dan, who seems to have a stronger immune system, escaped with a little congestion and a cough, but nothing too serious.)  I realized, after it was all over and we’d started to recover, that at that point I had not left the house in 8 days.  Not once.

It was fine, really, and we’re all (mostly) better now.  But it was a bit of a rough time while we were going through it.  It was a little bit tough to go back to having both boys home all day, just as I was getting used to having my mornings to myself.  And, since I was sick, too, all I wanted to do was to crawl back into bed in the morning, but it wasn’t to be.  I was a little worried that it would be hard to have them home — that I would have forgotten, in just a few weeks, how to have them both home and manage everything.  But it was fine (partly because I just ended up being ok with not managing everything).  Although I missed drinking my morning coffee without having to worry about where I set the cup, it was quite nice to go back to having them both home all day.  I love that they go to school, and I love that they have their friends and their teachers and that they enjoy it so much.  But, it was pretty great to get to spend all day with them.  (I just wish they hadn’t been sick.)

And it was a good reminder for me of how much I manage to get done in a typical day.  I think it’s sometimes easier to appreciate what I’m able to get done when I’m *not* getting it done — and certainly, the cleaning, errands and chores piled up during those weeks of us all being sick.  It was good for me to remember that I don’t spend my mornings without the kids just sitting around — there’s a lot that gets done during those hours (and a lot now to catch up on)!

Now, we seem to all be on the mend (I hope it’s really true).  I’m hoping we’ll all be able to get back into our new routine, and stick with it for a bit.  Hopefully we’ll all stay well for a while and be able to enjoy the rest of the fall.